Summary

  • Trend improving: Domestic airlines in Australia are steadily moving closer to long-term performance standards.
  • Virgin Australia shines: Strong focus on performance improvement leads to best month in two years.
  • Rex most reliable: Only 1% cancellation rate in April, while overall airlines near benchmark for performance.

Australia’s domestic airlines are performing much better and edging closer to the long-term averages for reliability and punctuality. The April results came out this week, and for the first time in ages, Virgin Australia has a good story to tell; however, no airline could match Rex for reliability, which canceled just 1% of its flights for the month.

The trend is upwards

Australia’s Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE) measures the on-time arrivals, departures and cancelations by the nation’s domestic airlines monthly, with the list losing one of its members, Bonza. The participating airlines are Hinterland Aviation, Jetstar, Qantas, Rex, Skytrans and Virgin Australia, and after some promising results in March, the upward trend continued in April.

Rex Boeing 737-800 7th Aircraft

Photo: Rex

BITRE sets the benchmark as the long-term averages, and for the past few years, the collective results have been well below average, which is understandable given the hardships faced during and after the pandemic. The long-term averages used by the report’s authors are 81.0% for on-time arrivals, 82.1% for on-time departures and 2.2% for cancelations.

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The expansion of airlines in the survey throws a few curveballs at the analysis simply because of the significant flight variations, complexity, and size. For example, Hinterland scheduled 1,015 flights compared to Qantas’ 19,687 and Virgin Australia’s 11,690 flights, so it’s not surprising that the two major carriers like to compare performance to each other. For this series of articles, all comparisons follow the BITRE table, which lumps all six together.

Qantas Jetstar Aircraft Sydney Airport Shutterstock

Photo: Ryan Fletcher | Shutterstock

Virgin Australia makes a comeback

April was Virgin Australia’s best month in some time, and CEO Jayne Hrdlicka said it was due to an intense focus on performance improvement while delivering great value and choice to Australian travelers. It was the airline’s best performance in two years for both on-time performance and cancelations and marks an improvement of 26.4 and 6 percentage points, respectively, since December 2023.

CEO, Jayne Hrdlicka and crew celebrate Middle Seat Lottery

Photo: Virgin Australia

The CEO added that April 2024 marked a return to pre-COVID levels of on-time performance and cancelations for the airline and said the recovery has been challenging for the aviation industry, but it is promising to see reliability and on-time performance improve across Australian airlines.

“We know on any given day, various factors, including weather, air traffic control, unscheduled aircraft maintenance, and crew resources, can impact airline operations. But our ability to manage these disruptions has improved, while at the same time we have focused on simplifying our growing operation.”

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In April, the airlines collectively recorded 79.2% of all flights arrived on time, 79.9% departed on time, and 2.3% were canceled, compared to the long-term averages of 81.0%, 82.1% and 2.2%, respectively. Rex was the most reliable, canceling just 1.0% of its flights, followed by Hinterland (1.2%), Virgin Australia (1.7%), Jetstar (2.2%), Qantas (2.3%) and Skytrans (17.5%). The airlines canceled 1,079 flights in April, so while the percentage is close to the benchmark, that is still around 100,000 disrupted customers.

Skytrans De Havilland Dash 8 at Brisbane Airport

Skytrans rated highest in on-time arrivals with 86.4% of flights, followed by Hinterland (81.6%), Virgin Australia (81.2%), Rex (80.7%), Qantas (79.0%) and Jetstar (74.9%). Hinterland departed 88.5% of its flights on time in April, followed by Skytrans (87.8%), Rex (83.3%), Virgin Australia (82.1%), Qantas (79.9%) and Jetstar (72.7%). The promising news is that more airlines are getting closer to the 80% range, and while there is month-to-month variability, overall punctuality and reliability are stabilizing.

Do you consider on-time performance and reliability when booking flights? Let us know in the comments.

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