Qantas blames poor on time performance on staff

Qantas saw its on-time performance decline again in July, and in fact, nearly one in six of its scheduled services between Sydney and Melbourne was cancelled.

More than one-third of the carrier’s domestic flights were late by at least 15 minutes – including 37 per cent of departures and 36 per cent of arrivals, according to the latest statistics from the Australian Transport Department. Approximately 44 per cent of its plane departed late from Sydney.

Making the performance numbers even worse for Qantas, one in 15 of its domestic flights in July were cancelled, which was nearly the same as in June, amounting to two consecutive months of poor performance.

The continued below-par performance is another strike against Qantas, which is still recovering from a review this summer by the aviation safety authority. In its report, the authority indicated that the national carrier was meeting few of its maintenance benchmarks.

On Friday Qantas cited as the reason for its poor on-time performance over the past two month on a stand-off with licensed aircraft engineers which lasted for 10 weeks. Although the dispute came to an end on 18 July, it is reported that the backlog of work is likely to mean another poor performance record for the month of August.

The July cancellation rate of nearly one in six flights between Sydney and Melbourne, which is the world’s third-busiest route, raised the cancellation rate for services by all carriers on the route to one in 10.

www.qantas.com.au