Perth Airport closed 2025 with an all-time record of 18.026 million passengers — international traffic up 12.5% — while a A$5 billion programme builds the runway, the hotel and the terminal that will finally end the split-airport era.
The 2025 result rewrote the books: 18.026 million passengers against 16.9 million in 2024, with international at 5.4 million (+12.5%), regional at a record 6.4 million — the resources fly-in fly-out economy — and interstate at a record 6.2 million. Eight new international airlines have arrived since 2023; ANA flies daily to Tokyo and China Southern now runs year-round to Guangzhou.
The long-haul story is Qantas's Project Sunrise rehearsal: nonstop Dreamliners to London, Paris and Rome — nearly 300,000 seats to Europe in 2026, the airline's biggest year yet — plus Johannesburg and Auckland launched in December 2025. The Rome seasonal service, the first nonstop ever between Australia and continental Europe, doubles capacity in 2026: 3 May to 22 October, four flights a week at peak. Twenty nonstop international routes now leave from here.
Perth's chronic flaw is the split: Qantas and Virgin domestic flights use T3/T4 on one side of the field, everyone else uses T1/T2 on the other, fifteen minutes apart by road. The A$5 billion consolidation fixes it in stages: the Terminal 2 expansion completes this year, the first multi-modal interchange and car park opened mid-2026, the Accor hotel arrives 2027, and the new 3,000-metre parallel runway — under construction since early 2025, built by BMD and CPB — goes operational in 2028.
The finale is the New Terminal: an expanded T1 International plus a new domestic terminal bringing Qantas into Airport Central around 2031 — the Major Development Plan closed for public comment in January 2026. By 2046 the airport projects 30 million passengers, 75,400 jobs and A$17 billion a year for the state economy. The Airport Line train already runs to the precinct: eighteen minutes from the CBD, capped at A$5.
Our read: fly direct from Europe if you can — the London, Paris and Rome nonstops make Perth the easiest entry to Australia from the west, and the evening departure into a Rome morning is the best-timed long-haul in the southern sky. Until 2031, respect the split terminals: check which side your flight uses before you order the car, and if you land at T3/T4, take the free 292 shuttle to Redcliffe station rather than paying for the cross-field taxi.
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