Flight Cancellations Increase Pressure On Qantas CEO Joyce

Qantas cancelled more flights in June than in May, putting more pressure on CEO Alan Joyce as the airline battles to keep up with a surge in demand.

According to a government, assessment released Thursday, Australia’s national airline cut 8.1 percent of planned domestic flights in June, making it the country’s least reliable carrier. A total of 5.8 percent of Virgin Australia’s services have been cancelled.

Unimpressed passengers have turned Joyce into a lightning rod on social media, and the stats do little to alleviate that burden. It has been said that Joyce cut too many employees during the pandemic, which left the carrier unable to function efficiently when travel is ramping back up again. According to reports in Sydney’s media, his harbour-side home was pelted with eggs and toilet paper earlier this month.

In a tweet Wednesday, the national secretary of the CFMEU union, Dave Noonan, wrote that Joyce had become a byword for travel mayhem after his trip from Melbourne to Canberra was delayed.

As stated in a press release, Qantas felt that the delays and cancellations that occurred in June were unacceptable. “They don’t meet our customers’ expectations,” the company claimed. We’re already witnessing improvements in the short term, and this trend will continue.

Passengers are forced to wait in check-in or security lines or sleep at foreign airports as the world’s dwindling aviation industry tries to keep pace with an unexpected increase in demand. Fuel costs have also increased as well as Covid-related staff absenteeism.

The performance of Australian airlines in June was rated as the worst since records began in 2003 in a report released on Thursday. Some disgruntled travellers singled out Qantas as the country’s most prominent and often expensive airline.

June saw better performance from Jetstar, Qantas’s low-cost carrier with a colourful reputation for punctuality. Since May, it has cancelled 5.5 percent of its services, a slight improvement.

There were little over half of the domestic flights operated by Qantas operating on time in June. Compared to May, only 58.4% of the airline’s flights left on time and only 59% landed on schedule, putting it behind rival Virgin’s 59%.