# 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: in 2022 the Queensland Government announced the Cairns Regional Trade Distribution Centre, a roughly 2,400 m² air-freight terminal built to streamline the airport's food and agricultural exports, worth around AU$40 million a year. Qantas Freight runs international cargo handling at the field, and Swissport adds general and special cargo services, a pharma centre and dedicated perishables handling. The Far North Queensland airport is best known as an export channel for live reef fish, seafood and fresh produce bound for Asia and New Zealand. Much of this volume moves as belly freight on scheduled international and domestic services. Proximity to the Port of Cairns supports multimodal road-sea-air solutions. For the largest intercontinental flows, Brisbane provides the complementary southern gateway. Strong inbound tourism demand keeps wide-body capacity, and thus belly space, available.

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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*