Airlines still behaving badly with too many flights getting the chop

The outgoing chief executive of Sydney Airport, Geoff Culbert, may only have two weeks left in the job, but that hasn’t stopped him from lobbing a grenade at the airlines on his way out.

In what is likely to be his last public address as CEO, Culbert highlighted that despite all the criticism and public scrutiny of our airlines over the past few months, they are still up to their old tricks.

Sydney Airport CEO Geoff Culbert isn’t mincing his words on the poor performance of the airlines.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

The latest cancellation rates on the Sydney-Melbourne route for September, according to Culbert, remains unacceptably poor. Jetstar (Qantas’ budget arm) was the worst offender with a cancellation rate of 9.9 per cent, Virgin wasn’t far behind at 9.3 per cent and Qantas was the best of a bad bunch with a rate of 7.4 per cent.

Culbert also shot holes in the regular excuses given by airlines for cancelled flights. His message for them is simple: stop blaming bad weather or the lack of air traffic controllers.

“For the record, there were 17 days in September where there were no weather or air traffic issues. Yet on those days, outbound and inbound on the Sydney-Melbourne route, there were still 184 cancellations, or 52 per cent of the total for the month.

Transport Minister Catherine King says the decision to block more flights from Qatar was in the national interest.Credit: Michael Quelch

“In other words, in September there was almost zero correlation between cancellations and external factors like weather or [air traffic control] issue[s],” he said.

It beggars belief that at a time when airlines have been eviscerated for poor customer service, with Qantas, in particular, hauled over the coals in a Senate inquiry and accused by the competition regulator of selling tickets on cancelled flights, they keep providing their detractors with additional ammunition.

Nor does it make sense for them to invite unwelcome attention at a time when the federal government is working on whether to implement some of the regulatory overhauls recommended after a 2021 industry review by former Productivity Commission chief Peter Harris.

Only last month, Transport Minister Catherine King said that after consultation the federal government had a “particular eye on modernising the slot allocation framework and strengthening compliance measures to ensure that slots are not being misused by airlines”.

And Culbert is the bloke that educated the travelling public to the practice of airlines’ slot hoarding (and the 80/20 rule) – which allows airlines to retain the use of airport slots even if one in five are not being used.

Culbert is adamant this allows incumbent airlines too much latitude because they need to only use 80 per cent of their slots to keep them all.

“In what industry is it deemed acceptable to cancel up to 1 in 5 services? The 80/20 rule incentivises slot hoarding, rather penalising it, and so long as the 80/20 rule remains in place, slot hoarding will continue, and passengers will pay the price,” Culbert said in his speech to the Australian Airports Association on Wednesday.

Over allocation of the slots to Australia’s two main domestic aviation companies, limits new airline entrants from using them, which in turn is damaging for competition.

And then there are the other sets of statistics Culbert didn’t mention, that are a constant reminder of the failures in customer service and the undercooked mechanisms available to customers to seek redress.

Where other industries like banks and telecommunications have dedicated ombudsmen to deal with customer complaints, the airlines have the not so well-known Airline Customer Advocate, which is funded by the airlines themselves and has been widely criticised by consumer groups as being unfit for purpose.

In 2021, the free service was issued a shonky award by CHOICE which accused it of functioning as a glorified post box instead of an emboldened dispute resolution service. This week, after a long delay, the Airline Customer Advocate released its 2022 scorecard for the airlines.

Unsurprisingly, it amounted to a fail. In fairness, it did cover that diabolical period when the post-COVID service ramp-up was underway and the airlines were struggling to cope with excess demand and staff shortages.

But the findings make for a reasonable argument that the aviation industry needs a proper ombudsman. Between grumbling airports and the behaviour of the airlines, passengers need someone on their side.

In Europe, passengers are by law able to seek compensation for long delays and flight cancellations – which Qantas has argued should not be introduced in Australia.

While the airlines will point out that their on time performance has improved significantly since 2022, poor service levels remain a touchy subject for passengers. Just how committed Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin are to delivering a good service to their customers will soon be tested as the Christmas holiday season rolls in.

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