It may seem an odd place to find a team of meteorologists, but here they are, sitting in the Qantas headquarters near Sydney Airport. Actually, they’re inside the airline’s nerve centre, an office with more flashing displays than the trading floor of an investment bank. And they’re here to help navigate more than 100,000 passengers a day to their destinations.

Here are more numbers: 370 planes, 142 destinations, 100,000 flights a year delayed or cancelled. It’s that last number that galls travellers. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Qantas in particular has been under the spotlight for the number of cancellations and delays. And on the other side of the airport display that brings the bad news is the airline’s Mascot operations hub.