Federal Government data has revealed which Australian airlines were the most on-time in the last year. Given all the airport chaos we saw in 2022, it’s a shock any company made the list to be honest.
The info comes from the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE), which publishes data about on-time domestic flights every month.
The BITRE gets its info from Jetstar, QantasLink, Qantas, Rex Airlines, Virgin Australia and Virgin Australia Regional Airlines. The tea is real.
According to 7News, the data showed Qantas and QantasLink had the top on-time domestic departure and arrival rate between January and November of 2022. It was top for seven of those months.
This is quite wild considering the cooked news involving the airline over the last 12 months. First a Qantas passenger travelling from Sydney to Melbourne managed to hop on a flight without going through security.
Then Qantas flights had to be evacuated and 1000 people re-security screened at Melbourne Airport ‘cos of another breach a month later.
Now obviously neither of those incidents are Qantas’ fault but you’d think they would add up to some serious delays.
Coming in second was Virgin Australia and Virgin Australia Regional Network which scored the most on-time flights for the remaining four months.
A spokesperson for the brand told The Sydney Morning Herald that “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.”
That being said, the Bureau’s data showed across the board, things haven’t exactly been ship shape. Or should that be plane prime?
In November 2022, the average on-time performance was… not great.
Planes arrived on time an average of 66.2 per cent of the time and departed on time 66.5 per cent of the time. In contrast, during November 2021 arrivals were on time 87.4 per cent of the time and departed correctly 87.0 per cent of the time.
The cancellation rate for this November was also 4.4 per cent, while last November it was 2.4 per cent.
“This month’s on-time arrivals figure was significantly lower than the long term average performance for all routes (81.7 per cent) and the on-time departures figure was also significantly lower than the long term average (82.9 per cent),” said the report.
There have been a couple of factors impacting the major airlines — and airports — including staffing issues (seriously, give those workers a huge raise) and all of that fucked weather. Thanks for nothing La Niña.
I’m manifesting 2023 is the year of less plane-based nightmare fuel.
