Australian Airlines’ Poor On-Time Performance Persists

Compared to the long-term average, domestic airlines’ on-time arrivals and departures dropped more in November 2022, and the cancellation rate was greater than usual, at 4.4%.

Average arrival and departure on all routes flown by Jetstar, Qantas, QantasLink, Rex Airlines, Virgin Australia, and Virgin Australia Regional Airlines in November 2022 was 66.2% and 66.5%, respectively.

The monthly cancellation rate of 4.4% was much higher than the long-term average of 2.1% during that same month.

According to the most recent summary of airline on-time performance statistics from BITRE, however, the percentage of on-time arrivals and departures averaged approximately 87% in November 2021.

With an average cancellation rate of 2.9% in October 2022, all airlines met their drastically reduced performance standards.

Compared to October 2022, when the average cancellation rate was 2.9 percent, all airlines met much lower performance standards.

On-time arrivals

1. QantasLink (74.9%)
2. Qantas (66.8%)
3. Rex Airlines (65%)
4. Virgin Australia Regional Airlines (64.9%)
5. Jetstar (61.3%)
6. Virgin Australia (60.9%)

On-time departures

1. QantasLink (74.7%)
2. Rex Airlines (67.2%)
3. Virgin Australia Regional Airlines (65.9%)
4. Qantas (65.8%)
5. Virgin Australia (61.9%)
6. Jetstar (60.7%)

Cancellations

1. Jetstar (7.2%)
2. Virgin Australia Regional Airlines (6%)
3. Virgin Australia (4.9%)
4. Qantas (3.7%)
5. QantasLink (3.6%)
6. Rex Airlines (3.1%)

On-time arrival and departure percentages were highest for the Qantas network (Qantas and QantasLink), followed by Rex Airlines, the Virgin Australia network, and Jetstar.

This is excellent news for Qantas, which has also just taken back the title of “world’s safest airline” from Air New Zealand in the 2023 AirlineRankings.com list.

In terms of monthly percentages, Jetstar had 7.2% more cancellations than the Virgin Australia network (5%), Rex Airlines (3.1%), or the Qantas network (3%).

The report from the Department of Transport found that regional routes provided the best service to their customers, with the Townsville-Cairns service having the highest percentage of on-time arrivals (87.8%) and the Adelaide-Alice Springs service having the highest percentage of on-time departures (92.7%).

Cancellations occurred more often on the more popular services. The routes with the highest number of cancellations were Melbourne-Sydney (11.9%) and Sydney-Melbourne (11.6%), followed by Canberra-Sydney (9.2%) and Sydney-Brisbane (7.7%) and Gold Coast-Sydney (7.7%).

Regarding airport punctuality, regional hubs in Queensland once again came out on top. Mount Isa Airport (84.9%) and Emerald Airport (84.4%) had the best percentages of on-time departures.