For large geographically countries, the provision of domestic air transport is a vital contributor to tourism destination competitiveness as it creates opportunities for internal dispersal of domestic as well as international travellers. Among the various studies on tourism destination competitiveness, the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI) is one that makes specific use of air transport data. Air transport is one of the fourteen indicators (or ‘pillars’) to comprise the TTCI, consisting of variables such as available seat kilometres (ASK), number of departures per population, airport density, number of airlines, among others. Making use of Shaw’s (1982) aviation factors (including safety, network coverage, service consistency etc) relevant to tourism development and the use of comparative case studies between Australia and Brazil, we argue that the existing air transport variables comprising the TTCI do not properly measure tourism destination competitiveness, particularly in the case of a developing, geographically large country such as Brazil.