Qantas, Virgin, Jetstar, Rex cancel 21 domestic flights on Monday

Dozens of domestic flights out of Sydney Airport have been cancelled across four airlines on Monday.

Twenty-one domestic flights across Qantas, Virgin Australia, Jetstar and Rex airlines have been cancelled out of Sydney airport on Monday.

Virgin Airlines canned 10 flights just ahead of eight cancelled Qantas flights while Jetstar scrapped two trips and Rex pulled one, according to Sydney Airport’s flight list.

The first flight to be slashed was a Virgin Australia trip to Brisbane at 6.30am on Monday morning and the last one was a Virgin Australia flight at 6.30pm to Melbourne.

A listener told 2GB’s Ben Fordham he received a text message from Qantas just hours before he was supposed to board a flight on Monday morning that the upcoming trip was cancelled.

It comes after hundreds of passengers were left lingering in “stuffy” Qantas planes on runways across the country on Sunday after an IT glitch delayed up to a dozen flights.

Qantas executive Olivia Wirth, pictured, helping people check in at T3 Qantas Domestic departures terminal at Sydney Airport ahead of the winter school holidays. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Damian Shaw

The airline said the nationwide computer problem was uncovered about 4.30pm on Sunday and impacted 12 domestic flights, with some being delayed for up to one and a half hours.

The issue was fixed about 6pm, but there was expected to be minor flow on delays later into the evening.

The IT outage lasted about 90 minutes and affected a dozen flights. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Jeremy Piper

Only departure times were delayed and no aircraft that were already in the air were affected.

The IT issue was a back end problem. In computing, the back end is used to refer to the part of a computer system not directly accessed by a user and usually responsible for storing data.

Helen Farrell wrote online: “Qantas: planes stranded on tarmacs across Australia right now. Daughter on stuffy plane at Brisbane airport for 1h. Staff have no clue of extent of further delay.”

One Twitter user said a full plane had been stranded on the tarmac for 90 minutes.

“(Qantas), any update on your international computer outage impacting every single flight from departing? … Sitting on fully packed plane on tarmac for 90mins for 2hr is pretty ridiculous,” they wrote.

And Twitter user Tony Brown wrote: “(Qantas) just announced to the whole lounge that there is a ‘nationwide IT issue’ and that everyone should wait in the lounge until further notice.”

It comes after severe weather across NSW and a surge in Covid and flu cases for operating crew caused widespread flight delays and cancellations for domestic airlines in Sydney in recent weeks.

Qantas has been contacted for comment.