Qantas cancels more than one in 20 domestic flights as airlines continue to struggle
Qantas cancelled almost six per cent of all its domestic flights last month as Australia's airlines continued to fall short of longstanding reliability standards.
The federal government's Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE) yesterday released data detailing how the nation's carriers performed in February.
Its report showed just 73 per cent of domestic flights arrived on time – that is, within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival – and 74.5 per cent departed on time, while 4 per cent were cancelled.
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That's a step backwards from January, when 73.4 per cent of flights arrived on time and 3.1 per cent were cancelled.
BITRE said airlines' current reliability was far worse than the long-term benchmarks.
"This month's on-time arrivals figure was significantly lower than the long-term average performance for all routes (81.0 per cent) and the on-time departures figure was also significantly lower than the long-term average (82.1 per cent)," it said.
"The rate of cancellations was higher than the long-term average of 2.2 per cent."
Qantas was easily the worst offender when it came to cancellations, with 5.8 per cent – or more than one in every 20 – flights run by it and its regional arm QantasLink being scrapped.
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Qantas was found to be far less reliable than its budget carrier Jetstar. Louie Douvis/smh
It also had a below-average rate for on-time arrivals of 72.7 per cent – better than major rival Virgin at 71.5 per cent but worse than budget carriers Jetstar with 76.1 per cent and Bonza, which topped the chart with 81.7 per cent of its flights arriving on time.
Qantas said the bulk of its reliability issues were caused by strikes in Western Australia.
"Qantas' performance was significantly impacted in February by strike action by pilots in Western Australia," head of operations centre Daniel Dihen said.
"We had to cancel almost 550 flights because of seven 24-hour strikes, accounting for more than half of our total cancellations for the month.
"We also moved three Qantas Boeing 737s to Western Australia to help reaccommodate customers and mining charter flying, which also impacted on time performance across our broader network.
"All strike action has now been called off and the schedule has returned to normal. We thank customers for their patience...
"Data for March so far indicates Qantas is continuing its climb back to pre-covid levels of reliability, with on-time performance in the high 70s."
Rex, which had 72.1 per cent of its flights arrive on time, was the best-performed airline when it came to cancellations, scrapping 2.1 per cent, followed by Bonza (2.5 per cent), Jetstar (2.6 per cent) and Virgin 2.8 per cent.
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