iscover
Qantas and QantasLink have come out on top of the latest BITRE reliability data, despite lagging Virgin and Jetstar on cancellations.
QF-designated services in September saw an on-time departure rate of 77.1 per cent and on-time arrivals of 76 per cent, compared to 73.1 per cent and 73 per cent respectively for VA flights; however, Virgin’s cancellation rate was half of Qantas’ at 1.4 per cent compared to 2.8 per cent.
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Individually, QantasLink outperformed mainline Qantas services for on-time departures and arrivals, with 78.5 per cent on-time departures to Qantas’ 75 per cent and 77.5 per cent on-time arrivals to Qantas’ 73.7 per cent. Mainline Qantas cancellations were lower, however, at 2.4 per cent to QantasLink’s 3.2 per cent.
“The result puts Qantas four points ahead of its main domestic competitor in the same month as the start of Australian school holidays and football finals, which saw higher numbers of passengers travelling across the domestic network,” a Qantas spokesperson said.
“It was also three points higher than Qantas’ performance in September 2023, representing an extra 80,000 customers who departed on time when compared to the same month last year.”
74 per cent of Jetstar flights took off on time for the month, with the airline also behind only regional carriers Rex and Hinterland on cancellations. Hinterland, based in Cairns, saw the lowest cancellations overall in September at 1.1 per cent, as well as the highest on-time performance at 94.1 per cent on-time departures and 91.1 per cent on-time arrivals.
“Jetstar recorded the lowest cancellation rate of the major airlines in September with only 1.3 per cent of domestic flights cancelled – its best result so far this year,” the Qantas spokesperson added.
“The low-cost carrier’s on-time departure performance also continues to improve, rising 2.3 per cent from August to 72.3 per cent.”
Virgin said it “continues to perform strongly against its major competitors”, noting that it cancelled fewer flights than Qantas for the eighth consecutive month.
“Delivering more than 11,500 flights, September was one of the airline’s busiest schedules this year. We helped tens of thousands of travellers attend AFL and NRL finals and on their trips away during the busy school holiday period,” a Virgin spokesperson said.
“Weather was the main reason for cancellations this month, but we were pleased to be able to achieve seven days in September with zero cancellations, a result not seen since February 2022.”
Across all participating airlines (Hinterland, Jetstar, Qantas, QantasLink, Rex Airlines, Skytrans, Virgin Australia and Virgin Australia Regional Airlines), 76.1 per cent of flights took off on time and 75.5 per cent arrived on time, with two per cent cancelled.
On-time departures and on-time arrivals were still behind long-term averages at 81.9 per cent and 80.8 per cent respectively; however, the industry notably beat the long-term cancellation average of 2.2 per cent.
Ian Becker
says:QF are sneaky.
If they know in advance a flight is going to be late, they send out an SMS to customers and say their flight has been ‘rescheduled.’ This has happened to me several times and it’s only when the crew apologize for the late departure, that we know the true story.