The OnBoard Courier for Australia

After it come Melbourne (MEL) with 69 destinations and about 343.8 departures a day, Brisbane City (BNE) with 81 destinations and about 310.2 departures a day, Perth (PER) with 47 destinations and about 190.7 departures a day, Adelaide (ADL) with 25 destinations and about 113.3 departures a day and Cairns (CNS) with 28 destinations and about 60.6 departures a day. Those are the alternates. When the primary gateway is shut by weather, a strike or a curfew, they are what a courier is rebooked through. Between them the 10 airports in Australia that publish departures schedule about 1,623.4 movements a day and reach 404 separate destinations, counting each city once per airport.

Reach matters more than frequency for a hand carry, because a courier flies whatever is leaving. From SYD alone, 1,213 airports are reachable with exactly one change, on top of the 92 served nonstop. A gateway that multiplies its own reach that far with one change is a hub in the useful sense: almost anywhere is two boarding passes away. It is computed from the scheduled network rather than from a booking engine.

80 per cent of everything scheduled to leave the country stays inside it, across 90 domestic destinations. That matters on a hand carry because it decides whether the last leg can be flown or has to be driven. A consignee outside the gateway city is then a connecting flight, not a four hour drive.

Outside its own borders the country is tied most closely to New Zealand, about 73.7 flights a day, Singapore, about 42.4 flights a day, Indonesia, about 40.6 flights a day, China, about 19.4 flights a day and Malaysia, about 16.9 flights a day. Those are the markets a courier can reach from Australia without a long connection, and they are also where a third country leg most often starts: an item that has to go from Australia to somewhere with no direct service usually travels through one of them.

82 airlines fly out of Australia in this data. Counted by how many of the country's routes each one appears on, the widest networks belong to Qantas on 195 routes, Jetstar on 133 routes, Virgin Australia on 104 routes, Rex Regional Express on 25 routes and Air New Zealand on 17 routes. The carrier matters to a hand carry more than it does to freight, because cabin baggage rules, what counts as an acceptable carry on item and whether an extra seat can be bought are set by the airline and not by the airport.

The longest single sector out of SYD in this data runs to Dallas-Fort Worth, United States (DFW), 13,808 km by great circle. Great circle is not a flown distance and will read short against a real routing, but it is the honest way to state a reach: it says what one aircraft does without stopping, which is exactly the question a courier desk is asking.

From the Emirates, Australia is reached nonstop. The network file records 5 such pairs: Dubai to Sydney (SYD), about 3.4 a day on Emirates, Dubai to Melbourne (MEL), about 2.3 a day on Emirates, Dubai to Brisbane City (BNE), about 2 a day on Emirates, Dubai to Perth (PER), about 1.1 a day on Emirates and Dubai to Adelaide (ADL), about 1.1 a day on Emirates. More than one nonstop pair means more than one chance to travel on the day the consignment is ready, which is worth more on this kind of work than any single fast flight.

The only carrier on that sector is Emirates. With one carrier there is no choice to make and no fallback to fall back on, so the booking is made early and the alternative is a connection rather than a different airline.

Australia runs 6h ahead of Dubai. That is why the departure chosen matters more than the flight time: the same sector can land inside the consignee's working day or an hour after it closed, depending on which bank the courier makes. At this offset the working days overlap for only part of the afternoon, which is the window a signature has to land in. The desk works the arrival backwards from the moment the recipient can sign, not forwards from the moment the item is ready.

Night restrictions are recorded for SYD and ADL: SYD between 23:00 and 06:00 local and ADL between 23:00 and 06:00 local. A late evening departure that slips past the start of one of those windows does not go until the morning, which on an urgent consignment is not a delay of an hour but of a working day. Those hours apply to scheduled movements, exemptions and seasonal variations exist, and the desk checks them against the airport and the carrier before it books rather than relying on the list.

This site publishes 18 lane pages that cross the border of Australia. Leaving Australia: Sydney to Abu Dhabi and Sydney to Doha. Arriving: Abu Dhabi to Melbourne, Abu Dhabi to Sydney, Bali to Sydney, Doha to Melbourne, Doha to Perth, Doha to Sydney, Dubai to Brisbane and Dubai to Melbourne.

Each of those has its own page with the flying time, the gateway pair and what actually moves on it. Read together they say something the individual pages do not: the places Australia is connected to on this desk are Abu Dhabi, Bali, Doha, Dubai, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, Los Angeles and Singapore. A lane page exists because the traffic on it is real, not because the pair looked plausible on a map.

Counting what is already published, this site holds 20 city pages, 8 standalone city pages, 10 Atlas entries, 1 airport page, 18 lane pages and 8 trade and history pages for Australia, and every one of them is linked from this page. That is the point of a country index: the material exists, it was written one page at a time, and until now there was no single place that connected it.

Alongside the reference material there is the country desk page, the travel and connections page and the courier recruitment page for people who already fly this market. This is one of the most heavily covered markets on the site, and the depth is the point: a shipper in a particular city with a particular part does not want a country page, they want their own.