VA Cancellations, Delays growing?

[PERLHR]

The Air Traffic Flow Management Daily Plan is published by Air Services the night before. If adverse weather is predicted, then the rate of arriving and departing aircraft is reduced. This then causes cancellations as there are more flights scheduled than available runway capacity.

This is why you'll see cancellations start to trickle in hours in advance, as the airlines pre-emptively cancel a number flights to manage the overall operation based around the reduced arrival/departures rates or ground delay programs that are going to be in place.

The other option is they wait until the last minute to cancel flights, knowing full well that runway capacity is reduced and cancellations are inevitable. I know I'd prefer the advance notice...

Agreed generally....but I wonder what the stats are regarding other airline cancellations? It's not as if MEL is Heathrow or Gatwick (the latter who as we know, operates an amazing one runway operation for the movements and pax numbers ) and busy London TMAs to content with and I don't see such a degree of cancelled flights there. It's usually all or very little. Out of interest has MEL got Cat 3 for low vis ops?

 

[AviatorInsight]

Agreed generally....but I wonder what the stats are regarding other airline cancellations? It's not as if MEL is Heathrow or Gatwick (the latter who as we know, operates an amazing one runway operation for the movements and pax numbers ) and busy London TMAs to content with and I don't see such a degree of cancelled flights there. It's usually all or very little. Out of interest has MEL got Cat 3 for low vis ops?

Yes it does, but just because an airport has CATIII ops doesn't mean it's straight up better. It actually restricts operations in a number of ways.
1. You need to the protect the ILS signal for CAT II/III. This means ATC need to hold aircraft further back from the runway on the ground and further spacing between aircraft in the air. So this obviously drops the arrival rate and departures then get squeezed.
2. Then you've got the aircraft/crew not capable of CATII/III. So ATC need to sequence around who can/can't.
3. Activating low vis procedures early would straight up impose delays on a day when Cat I ops would have been fine with normal spacing.

TLDR; Stay in normal ops for as long as possible to sustain the higher rate. CAT III is there to avoid a total shutdown.

 

[PERLHR]

Yes it does, but just because an airport has CATIII ops doesn't mean it's straight up better. It actually restricts operations in a number of ways.
1. You need to the protect the ILS signal for CAT II/III. This means ATC need to hold aircraft further back from the runway on the ground and further spacing between aircraft in the air. So this obviously drops the arrival rate and departures then get squeezed.
2. Then you've got the aircraft/crew not capable of CATII/III. So ATC need to sequence around who can/can't.
3. Activating low vis procedures early would straight up impose delays on a day when Cat I ops would have been fine with normal spacing.

TLDR; Stay in normal ops for as long as possible to sustain the higher rate. CAT III is there to avoid a total shutdown.

Yeah I get that. Just that it should help to avoid if fog or low vis , actual flight cancellations or at least keep them to a minimum. Begs the question are all pilots (eventually) Cat 3 certified in Australia or is it kept low?

 

[AviatorInsight]

Yeah I get that. Just that it should help to avoid if fog or low vis , actual flight cancellations or at least keep them to a minimum. Begs the question are all pilots (eventually) Cat 3 certified in Australia or is it kept low?

Pilots will be low visibility qualified, but this depends on the airline’s certification and the aircraft itself. Some VA aircraft are only good for CAT II operations, yet I’m CAT III qualified. Turboprop pilots generally aren’t low visibility qualified because the aircraft isn’t capable of an autoland.

 

[Harrison_133]

The OTP data for September 2026 was released today, which covers VA's meltdown over the AFL Grand Final Weekend.

Cancellations for the month were only 0.2% higher than Qantas and OTP was above Jetstar.

Reporting Airlines	Sectors Scheduled	Arrivals on-time %	Departures on-time %	Cancellations %
Hinterland	1,632	95.2	97.2	0.0
Jetstar	8,188	73.8	71.4	0.8
Qantas - all QF designated services	19,489	82.5	83.2	1.4
Rex Airlines	4,378	77.7	81.0	1.1
Skytrans Australia	337	69.6	70.2	3.3
Virgin Australia - all VA designated services	11,882	74.2	74.3	1.6
All Airlines	45,906	78.7	79.0	1.3
Individual operating entities
Qantas	6,993	80.7	84.5	0.7
QantasLink	12,496	83.5	82.4	1.7
Virgin Australia	11,700	74.2	74.2	1.6
Virgin Australia Regional Airlines	182	76.9	80.2	0.0

https://www.bitre.gov.au/resource/aviation/airline-time-performance-statistics-monthly-summary

 

[Saab34]

Don’t they ‘reschedule’ under a 4 digit flight number? (I recall many of the AFL delays got done that way). Does that impact the picture here or am I reading into it too much….

 

[Harrison_133]

Don’t they ‘reschedule’ under a 4 digit flight number? (I recall many of the AFL delays got done that way). Does that impact the picture here or am I reading into it too much….

I think you're reading too much into it.

There were a heap of flights in the VA95xx range on PER-MEL v.v. that showed up as "cancelled" but they were actually just placeholders in the schedule. They were switched to flight numbers in the normal range before being put on sale. None of those VA95xx flights that appeared on the flight status over that weekend were ever available for sale to the public.

Looking at the specific route data for Melbourne - Perth in the month of September (given it was the main subject of the media attention):

	On-Time Arrivals	On-Time Departures
Jetstar	64.2%	61.1%	0 flights cancelled
Qantas	70.8%	82.4%	0 flights cancelled
QantasLink	0.0%	0.0%	3 flights cancelled
Virgin	66.5%	61.7%	2 flights cancelled