Jan 2019: appalling MEL - SYD unpunctuality

[Melburnian1]

January 2019 was largely a holiday month, but still busy.

BITRE figures show that punctuality on Australia's busiest air route was shocking in January.

From MEL north to SYD, 34 per cent of TT flights were more than 15 minutes late arriving at gate in SYD.

33.6 per cent of JQ flights were similarly late when measured like this, as were 22.2 per cent of QF's and 19.9 per cent of VA's.

Then we have cancellations. Northbound, TT had an appalling cancellation rate of 16.8 per cent. That's one in every six scheduled northbound flights.

QF had an unacceptable cancellation percentage of five per cent and VA 3.4 per cent, still poor.

Weather played a part but it does not account for every 'no show' of a timetabled flight, nor for every instance of inability to keep to the timetable.

Southbound - slower schedules where all but TT typically allow 95 minutes gate-to-gate compared with 85 minutes northbound - the JQ SYD down to MEL cancellation percentage jumped to 6.7 per cent, QFs was 4.9, VA was the best at 3.4 and TT remained the worst at (again) 16.8 per cent of southbound SYD - MEL scheduled flights.

Timekeeping was a little better southbound but the two best, QF and JQ still had respectively 18.2 and 19.2 per cent of flights that ran more than 15 minutes late to destination. Tt and JQ hovered around the 30 per cent mark of late flights: unimpressive.

Just terrible that this subpar performance goes on month after month.

As a nation we miss out on the benefits of true high speed trains that so many other nations have or are embracing. If we had a properly operated HSR (high speed rail) network, reliability and punctuality would soar as they have overseas. But airlines here fight tooth and nail so that it's not funded, built and opened, as they know how the community would embrace HSR.

 

[AviatorInsight]

Interesting numbers. I suspect that the TT pilot strike and industrial action played a key part in those figures.

 

[Melburnian1]

Interesting numbers. I suspect that the TT pilot strike and industrial action played a key part in those figures.

If I'm not mistaken, the strike was only for four hours one (Friday?) morning (although I agree it would have affected flights later).

One weekday is c.3.5 per cent of all scheduled flights (bearing in mind without checking that Saturdays probably have fewer) so it doesn't quite explain the 8.8 per cent cancellation rate, unless pilots were ringing in sick on other days beyond the usual number off duty for that reason.

 

[AviatorInsight]

If I'm not mistaken, the strike was only for four hours one (Friday?) morning (although I agree it would have affected flights later).

One weekday is c.3.5 per cent of all scheduled flights (bearing in mind without checking that Saturdays probably have fewer) so it doesn't quite explain the 8.8 per cent cancellation rate, unless pilots were ringing in sick on other days beyond the usual number off duty for that reason.

Correct. So the strike and industrial action are separate. The first part of industrial action was that pilots would not come in on days off, an attribute heavily relied on by crewing. This went on for a couple of weeks and then that led into the 4hr stop work strike on the one day only. I can’t explain all of the figures but believe it definitely added to the higher than normal cancellations/late flights.

 

[moa999]

Suspect weather events which limited SYD to MEL to single runway operations was responsible for a lot of both the delays and the cancellation stats.

 

[dajop]

QF had an unacceptable cancellation percentage of five per cent and VA 3.4 per cent, still poor.

Playing devil's advocate here, but acceptability may depend on the effect on passengers.

During the period when flights on a route like MEL/SYD are operating at 15 minute frequencies, most travellers would barely be effected if they happened to be moved 15 mins earlier or later due to cancellation. Those most likely to be effected would be those on connections. In fact if someone on the 7:15am, and was moved to the 7:30am flight, and it arrived on schedule, that would be considered an on time arrival (by airline standards) for a 7:15am.

I am sure some of these quarter hourly flights do get cancelled due to loadings.

 

[Melburnian1]

dajop, the airline punctuality standards are the same for domestic flights of an hour and international flights of 16 hours: 'on time', as you state, is within 15 minutes of the timetabled arrival.

Different modes, but compare that to surface transport. Varies around the world but for journeys of a similar length to MEL - SYD (that is timetabled for 85 to 95 minutes depending on direction, exception TT - five minutes more), a trip can be regarded as 'late' if it's two to five minutes 00 seconds behind time arriving at destination.

So a very generous buffer for the airlines' shorter trips.