# Cairns International Airport (CNS)

> Cairns, AU · IATA: CNS · ICAO: YBCS · Medium Airport · Cargo Hub

## Quick Facts

| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| IATA | `CNS` |
| ICAO | `YBCS` |
| City | Cairns |
| Country | AU |
| Type | Medium Airport |
| Elevation | 3 m |
| Cargo | ✅ |
| GPS | -16.87892, 145.74948 |

## Description

Cairns backs its freight role with real infrastructure: the Regional Trade Distribution Centre, a roughly 2,400 m² facility in the airport's freight precinct, reached practical completion in late 2022 and now handles the region's food and agricultural exports, worth around AU$40 million a year, through cold and freezer rooms, temperature-controlled space and ambient transit areas. Live and frozen fish and crustaceans, avocados, mangoes, melons, citrus and blueberries move through it to Asian markets. Qantas Freight runs international cargo handling at the field, and Swissport adds general and special cargo services, a pharma centre and dedicated perishables handling. Much of this volume travels as belly freight on scheduled international and domestic services, with inbound tourism demand keeping wide-body capacity available. Proximity to the Port of Cairns supports multimodal road-sea-air solutions, while Brisbane (BNE) provides the complementary southern gateway for the largest intercontinental flows.

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*Freight Academy — Airport Profile: [https://www.freight-academy.com/en/information/airports/cairns-international-airport-cns](https://www.freight-academy.com/en/information/airports/cairns-international-airport-cns)*

*Markdown mirror: [https://www.freight-academy.com/api/md/airports/en/cairns-international-airport-cns](https://www.freight-academy.com/api/md/airports/en/cairns-international-airport-cns)*

*LLM-Summary (JSON): https://www.freight-academy.com/api/v1/airports/cairns-international-airport-cns/llm-summary*