Qantas and Virgin spar over August reliability

Virgin Australia’s combined network – including both mainline and regional services – saw 69.9 per cent on-time arrivals, 71.9 per cent on-time departures, and 1.3 per cent cancellations, while Qantas and QantasLink together saw 73.2 per cent on-time arrivals, 74.7 per cent on-time departures, and 3.3 per cent cancellations.

Broken down individually, 70.1 per cent of mainline Virgin services took off on time compared to mainline Qantas’ 68 per cent; 72.3 of Virgin flights departed on time compared to 70.5 per cent for Qantas; and 1.3 per cent of Virgin flights were cancelled compared to 4 per cent for Qantas.

QantasLink easily outperformed Virgin’s regional services in on-time arrivals and departures, however, with 76.6 per cent to 60 per cent and 77.4 per cent to 56.2 per cent respectively, while 2.8 per cent of QantasLink services were cancelled.

Jetstar, meanwhile, saw 72.1 per cent on-time arrivals, 70.3 per cent on-time departures, and 1.7 per cent cancellations.

“Virgin Australia again led the major airlines on both departure on-time performance and the completion of scheduled flights in August – maintaining a lower cancellation rate than our main competitor for the seventh consecutive month and recording our lowest cancellation rate in two years,” said Danny Norman, Virgin Australia’s general manager for its integrated operations centre.

“What makes this performance even more remarkable is that during August, Virgin Australia carried nearly 50,000 Rex customers free of charge after the airline entered voluntary administration and suspended its jet operations.

VIEW ALL

“That is the equivalent of over 275 full Boeing 737-800s and resulted in higher than usual flight loads on our intercity routes. Maintaining a stable and reliable operation during this period is a testament to the fantastic effort by teams across all parts of the business.”

Qantas argues, however, that comparing mainline Qantas services individually does not paint an accurate picture of performance, as around 60 per cent of QF-designated domestic services are operated by QantasLink.

This includes routes where QantasLink operates the majority of services, such as Sydney and Melbourne to Canberra, and routes where QantasLink competes with Virgin on its own and Qantas does not operate mainline services, such as Melbourne–Hobart and Brisbane–Canberra.

“Qantas was the most on-time major domestic airline in August, with almost three quarters of flights departing on time,” a Qantas spokesperson said.

“The national carrier is rolling out several initiatives to improve the aircraft boarding experience for customers and on-time departures.

“Group Boarding is in place for most Qantas domestic B737 and A330 services and a further rollout to other aircraft types is being explored. A new Early Boarding initiative on select B737 services is also seeing an improvement in on-time departures for early morning (first wave) flights.”

Across all participating airlines (Qantas Group, Virgin Australia, Rex, Hinterland Aviation, and Skytrans), 72.7 per cent of flights arrived on time, 74.1 departed on time, and 2.9 per cent were cancelled. All three metrics remained worse than long-term averages of 80.8 per cent on-time arrivals, 82 per cent on-time departures, and 2.2 per cent cancellations.

While Rex saw the second highest cancellation rate for the month, at 6.9 per cent – just below Skytrans at 7.4 per cent – most of these cancellations were its planned domestic jet services, with Rex regional flights seeing only a 2.1 per cent cancellation rate.