High cancellation rates on business routes a poor reflection on new Qantas chief, says Canberra Airport

Promises of service improvement by the new Qantas chief executive are unfulfilled, as cancellation rates soar on busy business routes.

Canberra Airport chief executive Stephen Byron is frustrated by all too frequent flight cancellations. Picture: Sean Davey.

New Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson has been accused of failing to live up to her promise to eliminate poor customer service, as flight cancellations continue on Australia’s most important business routes.

On-time performance data released this week showed 47 flights were cancelled by Qantas on Canberra-Sydney in October, or 10.1 per cent of flights.

Only Melbourne-Sydney fared worse, with 111 flight cancellations by Qantas in the month, or 12.1 per cent of services, amid ongoing accusations of slot hoarding by the airline.

The results were not isolated to October, with an average of 50 flights a month cancelled by Qantas on Canberra-Sydney since February.

In contrast, Virgin Australia scrapped an average of 10 flights a month on the route, a cancellation rate of around 4 per cent.

Canberra Airport CEO Stephen Byron said Qantas did not seem to be concerned about passengers flying between Australia’s capital and Sydney, and had not taken any effective steps to rectify the problem.

He said there was an “extremely poor level of reliability” on the route and passenger volumes had failed to recover from the pandemic. They remained 40 per cent below pre-Covid levels while other routes exceeded 2019 volumes.

“I would dream to have Adelaide’s cancellation rate, at 1.6 per cent,” Mr Byron said.

“I would even be delighted to have a rate of reliability commensurate with Albury (2.8 per cent).”

Ms Hudson promised to address customer pain points in September when she took over from Alan Joyce.

“The change in Qantas CEO has resulted in no change to customers having their flights cancelled between Canberra and Sydney,” Mr Byron said.

“Ms Hudson said ‘judge me on my actions’. Well, there has been no action or improvement. Essentially the same executive team at Qantas is delivering the same appalling service to customers.”

A Qantas aircraft landing at Canberra Airport. Picture: AAP

He suggested Qantas scheduling flights to Sydney a mere 10 to 15 minutes apart, and then cancelling 10 per cent of services, was designed to maintain their slots at Australia’s biggest gateway.

Sydney Airport CEO Geoff Culbert has also accused Qantas of “over-filing for slots” and then cancelling multiple flights, to keep other airlines out of the gateway, or limit their access.

Slots are the time windows allocated to airlines in which to operate flights, with limited numbers available at Sydney Airport due to the hourly flight cap and evening curfew.

Qantas has consistently rejected claims of slot hoarding, insisting it intended to operate every flight as scheduled but was at the mercy of weather, air traffic control restrictions, crew availability and technical issues.

“We know how important it is for our customers to get away on time and we’re focused on making sure we deliver on the experience our customers expect,” said a Qantas spokeswoman.

“We are particularly focused on bringing down cancellations on flights between Sydney and Canberra and the measures we have put in place over the past few months are helping. Cancellations on flights between Sydney and Canberra so far in November are down significantly, currently tracking at around 4 per cent.”

She admitted cancellations were more common on routes with high frequency because it was easier to reallocate passengers to other flights.

Among the steps being taken was the replacement of Dash 8 turboprops with Boeing 737s to increase reliability, she said.

Originally published as High cancellation rates on business routes a poor reflection on new Qantas chief, says Canberra Airport