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Virgin Australia has slumped to the back of the pack for on-time performance in a month plagued by poor weather and ground delays across the board.
Qantas Group beat its main domestic rival in on-time departures and arrivals for the second month in a row, with Jetstar also coming out ahead on both metrics – though Virgin still prevailed on cancellations. All three figures for the whole sector were notably worse than long-term averages.
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The Qantas network saw 76.7 per cent on-time departures and 75.2 per cent on-time arrivals to Virgin’s 68.4 per cent and 66.2 per cent respectively, while Jetstar saw 72.2 per cent on-time departures and 73.6 per cent on-time arrivals.
Just 2.2 per cent of Virgin network flights were cancelled, however, compared to 2.8 per cent at Jetstar and 3.8 per cent at Qantas, with only Hinterland and VARA seeing lower cancellation rates at 1.5 per cent and 1.0 per cent respectively. Hinterland also once again outperformed the field in both on-time departures and arrivals.
“While adverse weather impacted on-time performance in July, Virgin Australia maintains an average OTP rate of above 80 per cent for 2025 to date,” said Danny Norman, Virgin Australia general manager, Integrated Operations Centre.
“We will prioritise completing a flight in order to get our guests to their destinations on the desired day of travel wherever possible.
“This means that sometimes a delay to scheduled flight times is necessary, but travellers can have confidence that Virgin Australia is the airline they can trust to get them where they need to go on their day of travel.”
Overall industry performance was below long-term averages for the month, with 74.2 per cent of all flights across participating airlines departing on time and 73 per cent arriving on time, while 3.1 per cent were cancelled; this is compared to the long-term average of 81.8 per cent on-time departures, 80.7 per cent on-time arrivals, and 2.2 per cent cancellations.
The impact of poor weather had been flagged by Airservices in its Australian Aviation Network Overview report for July, which noted that OTP “remains above last year’s levels, but has declined since June, largely due to severe weather disruptions”.
“Weather was the predominant constraint in July, contributing to 98 per cent total [air traffic flow management] delays at Sydney due to strong crosswinds, and 67 per cent at Perth impacted by low visibility conditions,” the report read.
“Despite these challenges, the aviation industry demonstrated its capacity to learn and adapt collaboratively, using nightly senior oversight meetings to improve network decisionmaking ahead of peak days with significant forecast weather conditions.”
Qantas says this was its best result for Qantas and QantasLink combined since 2019, and that it has initiatives in place to boost reliability and bring down cancellations.
On-time arrivals (per cent)
- Qantas and QantasLink – 75.2
- Virgin Australia and VARA – 66.8
- Hinterland – 89.0
- SmartLynx Australia (formerly Skytrans) – 76.0
- QantasLink – 75.8
- Virgin Australia Regional Airlines – 75.5
- Qantas – 74.2
- Jetstar – 73.6
- Rex – 73.2
- Virgin Australia – 66.7
On-time departures (per cent)
- Qantas and QantasLink – 76.7
- Virgin Australia and VARA – 68.4
- Hinterland – 93.4
- SmartLynx Australia (formerly Skytrans) – 79.0
- Qantas – 77.7
- QantasLink – 76.1
- Rex – 75.2
- Jetstar – 72.2
- Virgin Australia Regional Airlines – 71.5
- Virgin Australia – 68.4
Cancellations (per cent)
- Qantas and QantasLink – 3.8
- Virgin Australia and VARA – 2.2
- SmartLynx Australia (formerly Skytrans) – 7.2
- QantasLink – 4.0
- Qantas – 3.5
- Rex – 3.3
- Jetstar – 2.8
- Virgin Australia – 2.2
- Hinterland – 1.5
- Virgin Australia Regional Airlines – 1.0
