Sydney Airport has welcomed its one billionth passenger on an A380 exactly 100 years after the first-ever commercial passenger landed at the airport on a dirt runway in the back of a two-seat bi-plane.
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Ten-year-old Katinka Hermens from the Blue Mountains was feted as she arrived on Thursday morning on a Singapore Airlines flight from Singapore.
She'd been upgraded to business class along with her mother and younger brother.
Katinka looked somewhat overwhelmed as she was greeted by the airport's chief executive, a brass ensemble and a large Sydney Airport cake.
"We knew our billionth passenger would arrive this year and so we did the modelling and crunched the numbers," chief executive Geoff Culbert told reporters.
"We landed on this day and this flight. It was passenger number 73 so we went down the manifest and we found our billionth passenger."
Katinka was presented with Singapore Airline tickets for her family to travel anywhere in the world within the next 12 months.
She had flown from Amsterdam to Singapore before flying on to Sydney.
Australian Associated Press
