Nearly 40 per cent of Jetstar’s flights for the month departed late and more than 35 per cent arrived late, compared with 26.1 per cent and 26 per cent respectively for the sector. However, this was an improvement for Jetstar of around five percentage points on delays in April. Cancellations sat at 4.2 per cent.
“It’s really pleasing to see some of the initiatives we’ve introduced are starting to deliver results,” Ms Tully said.
“Everyone across Jetstar is committed to getting the airline to its best and ensuring customers have a great travel experience with us over the holidays.”
She said that Jetstar’s performance in June was also on track to be an improvement, with its cancellation rate almost halved for the first three weeks of this month compared with May. Its on-time performance is currently over 70 per cent for the month.
Ms Tully pointed to recent changes to check-in and boarding times and a broader recruitment drive as causes of the improvement.
Qantas outperforms Virgin
The Qantas network (Qantas and QantasLink combined operations) had the most flights arriving and departing on time of any airline, at 76.2 per cent and 75.5 per cent respectively.
This just beat rival Virgin’s network performance (Virgin Australia and Virgin Australia Regional Airlines combined) of 74.1 per cent for on-time arrivals and 74.8 per cent for departures, as the airline tries to woo investors as it explores relisting on the ASX.
Once the regional airlines were excluded, however, Virgin had higher on-time arrivals and departures than Qantas.
Qantas had fewer cancellations at 2.5 per cent compared with Virgin’s 3.2 per cent, while Rex Airlines had the least cancellations for the second month in a row at 2.3 per cent.
The BITRE data revealed that flying between capital cities is still a risky business. The Canberra-Sydney route had the highest cancellations of any route at 8.7 per cent, with Jetstar responsible for more than two-thirds of these.
Jetstar and Virgin cancelled nearly one in every 10 flights on the popular Melbourne-Sydney route in May, and 8.5 and 9.5 per cent respectively of trips in the reverse direction.
BITRE said that while airlines’ performance had improved since last May, it was still lagging pre-pandemic levels.
