Virgin scraps 37 flights a day as flu season piles pressure on airlines

Covid and flu-ravaged Virgin Australia cancelled an average of 37 a flights a day in the July school holidays in a new low for travellers.

Travellers queue up to check in at Sydney Airport’s T2 domestic terminal. Picture: John Appleyard

Flu and Covid-ravaged Virgin Australia cancelled an average of 37 flights a day across the July school holiday period, after schedules were sliced and diced to ease pressure on staff.

Data compiled by aviation analytics firm Cirium for the period from July 1 to 17, showed Virgin scrapped 624 services, or 10.8 per cent of 5764 flights scheduled.

Another 2752 flights were delayed, including 609 by more than an hour.

The disruption followed an “unprecedented level” of sickness among staff, forcing the airline to cut back on flights at one of the busiest times of the year.

Despite the upheaval and CEO Jayne Hrdlicka’s own admission to staff it had been a “tough couple of weeks in the busy holiday period” a Virgin Australia spokeswoman said the cancellation rate was trending in the right direction.

“Our crew continue to work hard including picking up additional duties, to help our guests to their destinations during busy periods,” said the spokeswoman.

“We sincerely apologise to any guest impacted by changes to our flight schedule and we are working around-the-clock to ensure our guests get to their final destinations.”

Qantas and Jetstar had lower cancellation rates in the holiday period, but continued to struggle with on-time performance.

According to the data, Jetstar flights had the poorest track record for being very late, with one in ten arriving more than an hour past schedule and 39 per cent of Qantas flights landed 15 to 60-minutes behind time.

A Qantas spokesman said they appreciated how frustrating flight disruptions were for customers.

“Our performance this month has been impacted by a big spike in Covid-19 cases for our operating crew as well as the severe weather in New South Wales,” he said.

“Things are improving with call centre wait times now down into the minutes and our mishandled bag rates are back close to what they were pre-pandemic.”

Although Rex had a very low rate of cancellations at under 1 per cent, the data showed 388 of the airline’s 3544 flights arrived more than an hour late, or 11 per cent.

Australian Federation of Travel Agents CEO Dean Long said the current level of disruption in the aviation industry was the “number one issue” for members.

“There’s no efficiency in the system. The idea of a simple booking isn’t the case any more. Most (bookings) are needing multiple adjustments and it’s happening all the time,” Mr Long said.

“It’s creating a massive workload for travel agents and there will have to be an introduction of some fees for that with these constant alterations.”

Making matters worse for frustrated travellers, were considerably higher airfares in July compared to the April holiday period across all domestic airlines.

Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics domestic airfare data, showed the average cheapest fares on some routes were more than double those paid three months ago.

For example a one-way fare from Brisbane to Hobart had gone from $159 to $358, and a seat on a Canberra-Sydney flight was now selling for $378, compared to $179 in April.

The average cheapest fare from Cairns to Melbourne was $324 up from $211 a few months ago, Sydney-Hamilton Island had increased from $199 one-way to $283 and Darwin-Perth jumped from $679 to $994.

Skyrocketing fuel prices had played a part in the fare hikes, along with surging demand for domestic air travel.

Mr Long said airline capacity was still falling well short of demand, and had not been helped by reductions in flying by both Qantas and Virgin due to fuel prices and understaffing.

“If you look at the number of passenger movements domestically it’s back to pre-pandemic levels but the seat levels are nowhere near it,” he said.