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Virgin Australia has scored another reliability trifecta, beating Qantas in on-time performance and cancellations for the second month in a row.
BITRE data from January saw 77.7 per cent of Virgin network flights take off on time and 76.9 per cent arrive on time compared to 75.6 per cent on both measures for the Qantas network, while Virgin’s network cancelled 0.9 per cent of flights, compared to the Qantas network’s 2.4 per cent.
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Jetstar was at the bottom of the pack, with 66.8 per cent on-time departures and 69.7 per cent on-time arrivals but cancelled fewer flights than Qantas at 2.3 per cent.
Across all participating airlines, on-time departures and arrivals were both at 75.8 per cent, below long-term averages of 81.8 per cent and 80.7 per cent, respectively. Cancelled flights were at 2.1 per cent, slightly below the long-term average of 2.2 per cent.
Virgin Australia’s chief operations officer, Stuart Aggs, said reliability is “incredibly important” to the airline and its guests, with Virgin now completing more flights than Qantas for the last 12 straight months.
“We call it SPOT – safely performing on time – and it is a responsibility our team takes very seriously, so it is great their hard work is paying off,” he said.
“In addition to improving our on-time performance, we have recorded consistently strong completion rates, with more than 99 per cent of Virgin Australia’s scheduled domestic flights operating in December and January. This is despite some weather-related challenges caused by summer storms.
“A range of measures, including additional aircraft on standby and more team members rostered on reserve, have helped us manage inevitable disruption as it arises. This minimises the impact on our schedule and our guests’ travel plans.
“Pleasingly, our strong performance has continued into February, with departure OTP around 80 per cent for the month to date. That is great news for our corporate and SME customers who are travelling again following the summer break.”
For its part, Qantas says its on-time performance and completion rate have been ticking up since November.
“While our operational performance has improved significantly over the past few months, there is still work to do to get more customers to their destination on time,” a spokesperson said.
“Our people have put in a lot of hard work to improve our reliability and our February month-to-date performance is back near the long-term average.”
On-time arrivals (per cent)
- Virgin Australia and VARA – 76.9
- Qantas and QantasLink – 75.6
- Skytrans – 90.6
- Hinterland – 88.2
- Rex – 80.4
- QantasLink – 77.9
- Virgin Australia – 77.1
- Qantas – 72.3
- Virgin Australia Regional Airlines – 71.6
- Jetstar – 69.7
On-time departures (per cent)
- Virgin Australia and VARA – 77.7
- Qantas and QantasLink – 75.6
- Hinterland – 93.0
- Skytrans – 90.6
- Rex – 83.4
- QantasLink – 78.3
- Virgin Australia – 78.0
- Qantas – 71.6
- Virgin Australia Regional Airlines – 68.2
- Jetstar – 66.8
Cancellations (per cent)
- Virgin Australia and VARA – 0.9
- Qantas and QantasLink – 2.4
- Skytrans – 16.3
- Qantas – 2.8
- Jetstar – 2.3
- QantasLink – 2.1
- Virgin Australia Regional Airlines – 2.1
- Rex – 2.0
- Virgin Australia – 0.8
- Hinterland – 0.3
