One in four flights delayed, 1500 axed in horror February

Airlines have defended their ‘significantly worse’ performance, arguing the chaos was caused by factors beyond their control.

Airlines have blamed air traffic control and bad weather for poor punctuality in February with more than one in four flights delayed and 1571 services cancelled — or 56 a day.

On time performance data published by the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics showed most airlines struggled to keep to schedule last month, resulting in extensive disruption to travellers.

Across all domestic carriers an average of 27 per cent of flights arrived late, and 26.3 per cent experienced delays on departure.

The BITRE noted the results were significantly worse than the long term average of 81.6 per cent of on-time arrivals and 82.7 per cent of on-time departures.

QantasLink was the best performer with 80.9 per cent of flights taking off and landing on-time. Qantas managed to land 73.7 per cent of flights on time, and Virgin Australia 73.6 per cent.

Rex’s on-time arrival rate was 68.3 per cent and Jetstar’s a dismal 62.3 per cent. Jetstar also had the worst cancellation rate, axing 6.4 per cent of flights, or 395.

Qantas scrapped 4.4 per cent of its services or 304, and Virgin Australia 3.5 per cent or 358.

A statement from Qantas said cancellations were higher due to “the impact of weather including tropic cyclone Gabrielle and major thunderstorms in Sydney”.

“Ongoing air traffic control staffing shortages impacted operations at Sydney Airport on 25 days out of 28 in February,” said the statement.

“This resulted in a 2.5 per cent drop in on-time flights, and 76 cancellations.”

The poor on-time figures are causing concern ahead of the upcoming school holidays. Picture: NCA NewsWire /Brenton Edwards

Virgin Australia confirmed its performance was also impacted by ATC staff shortages and weather and a Rex spokesman said February was a particularly challenging month for all airlines operating in and out of Sydney Airport.

“Our on time performance was heavily impacted by air traffic control staff shortages, the ground delay program and the weather,” said the spokesman.

“These are issues completely beyond our control.”

Qantas was “disproportionately impacted” due to the fact 77 per cent of the airline’s domestic fleet operated through Sydney each day.

From Monday March 27, Qantas will send even more flights through Sydney with a dramatic increase in its Golden Triangle services.

An additional 57 return flights a week are scheduled between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane boosting capacity on those routes to 93 per cent of pre-Covid levels.

More seats are also in the pipeline for transcontinental flights with wide-body A330s to operate half of all services from Melbourne and Sydney to Perth.

Boeing 737s will continue to operate the other half.

The on-time performance figures did not bode well for the upcoming Easter period, with millions booked to fly across the three weeks of school holidays.

Qantas revealed that on the Easter long weekend alone, more than 700,000 people were expected to travel on more than 5000 domestic and international services.

In an effort to add resilience to their operations, Qantas and Jetstar had rostered additional employees and would have up to 20 aircraft on standby.

Extra workers were also being assigned to security screening points, to try to avoid a repeat of last year’s holiday travel pain.

Virgin Australia was currently using all available aircraft in an effort to service the strong demand. New Boeing 737 Max-8s were due to start arriving next month.