Between grappling with staff shortages, supply chain issues, the cost of fuel and the near-insatiable demand for flying, it’s fair to say the local airline industry’s return to the skies after COVID-19 has been challenging.
After a year of volatile airfares and performance, airlines and airports are now heavily scrutinised by a metric-savvy customer base quick to jump on any missteps. Due to capacity constraints felt by the whole industry, stock standard aviation issues such as a weather-induced runway reduction can turn a simple one-hour safety delay into a day-long saga.
Sydney Airport’s domestic terminal on December 23.Credit: Brook Mitchell
But with 2022 coming to a close, just how well did the airlines go with their on-time performance and the number of cancelled flights?
As things stand, airlines still have a way to go before getting to the pre-COVID cancellation rate of 2.1 per cent and remain below 2019’s average on-time performance rate of 82.9 per cent. However, things have improved from April and July’s dismal rates.
Australia’s largest airline Qantas has worn the brunt of consumer anger at the industry’s less-than-optimal return to flying this year, but according to monthly government data released by the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE), Qantas outperformed rival Virgin Australia in terms of on-time domestic performance for seven of the past 11 months.
The country’s smallest (and newest) domestic carrier Regional Express proved the most reliable over the eleven months, consistently beating out its rivals on average on-time performance across the period.
Qantas boss Alan Joyce says the airline has seen a “significant improvement” in performance in the last three months.Credit: Bloomberg
Qantas chief Alan Joyce said the airline has seen a “significant improvement” in performance in the last three months after conceding the industry failed to cope with the uncertainty of Omicron earlier in the year, “we’re back to pre-COVID levels of performance...way ahead of the competition. In October, we were the most reliable airline by far and that trend is continuing,” he told columnist Peter FitzSimons earlier this month.
Virgin was triumphant over its largest rival in April, May and June- but its performance across the board was well below pre-pandemic metrics as the sector struggled to cope with the uncertainty of Omicron and insufficient staffing.
Significant employee shortages at Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane’s airports earlier in the year did not help the airlines meet their performance goals, with Sydney Airport losing about half of its 33,000 staff during the pandemic, resulting in long queues, unhappy consumers and missed flights over April and July.
The latest BITRE data shows Qantas has established a comfortable margin, of about 10 points, over Virgin’s on-time performance for the past couple of months and also reduced its operations on some routes to account for the capacity constraints.
Rex Airlines has completed its acquisition of fly-in-fly-out operator National Jet Express.Credit: Sam D’Agostino
“On any given day our operations can be impacted by a number of factors, including those out of our control like challenging weather conditions. This happened a number of times throughout 2022,” a Virgin spokesperson said.
Although it was significantly behind its competitors in terms of performance last month, Virgin completed close to 3000 flights on the Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne route-exceeding Qantas, Jetstar and Rex services.
The country’s smallest (and newest) domestic carrier Regional Express proved the most reliable over the eleven months, consistently beating out its rivals on average on-time performance across the period.
Rex also boasted an enviable average cancellation rate over the period, averaging a rate of just 1.64 over the eleven months while Qantas’s budget arm Jetstar took home the crown for the highest average cancellations at 6.2, ahead of Qantas’ 5.5 and of Virgin Australia’s 4.8.
The weather issues that plagued October and November’s performance seem to have subsided this month, meaning the airlines will be working hard to curb their cancellation rates and increase their on-time performance data to round out the year with all three desperate to herald the new year with 100 per cent of their domestic capacity.
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