Qantas Cancels Over 5% of Domestic Flights as it Continues to Face Challenges

Qantas cancelled nearly six per cent of its domestic flights in February 2022 as Australian airlines continued to battle ongoing reliability issues. The Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE) showed that just 73 per cent of domestic flights arrived on time in February, a decrease compared to the 73.4 per cent in January. Furthermore, airline reliability was shown to be far worse than the long-term benchmarks where the average on-time arrivals stands at 81.0 per cent and average on-time departures at 82.1 per cent.

In terms of cancellations, the Qantas group had the highest rate, with 5.8 per cent of flights, including its regional arm QantasLink. On-time arrivals for Qantas were at a below-average rate of 72.7 per cent, better than Virgin Australia’s (71.5 per cent) but worse than Jetstar (76.1 per cent) and Bonza (81.7 per cent). Qantas attributed most of its reliability issues to strike action in Western Australia.

According to the head of Qantas’ operations centre, Daniel Dihen, the company had to cancel nearly 550 flights because of seven 24-hour strikes in February. This amounted to over half of its monthly cancellations. Moreover, Qantas moved three of its Boeing 737s to Western Australia to reaccommodate customers and mining charter flying, which further affected its on-time performance.

While the strikes have now ended and schedules are back to normal, Dihen thanked customers for their patience. He also stated that Qantas is currently working on returning to pre-pandemic levels of reliability, with on-time performance statistics for March already in the high 70s.

Rex Airlines was found to be the most reliable in terms of cancellations, with a rate of just 2.1 per cent. This was followed closely by Bonza with a cancellation rate of 2.5 per cent, Jetstar at 2.6 per cent, and Virgin Australia at 2.8 per cent. Despite the recent reliability issues, Qantas expressed its commitment to improving its on-time performance and reducing cancellations.