Why Are So Many Melbourne-Sydney Flights Cancelled?

The Melbourne to Sydney route has many cancelled flights.
Flights are routinely cancelled on the Melbourne-Sydney route. Photo: Matt Graham.

If you’re a regular flyer on the Sydney-Melbourne or Sydney-Canberra routes, you’ve probably experienced your fair share of last-minute cancellations. These two routes suffer the most cancellations of any major Australian domestic route.

Last month, according to BITRE data, QantasLink cancelled 10.9% of Canberra-Sydney flights and 8.7% of Sydney-Canberra flights. On the Melbourne-Sydney route, an average of 7.8% flights were cancelled across all airlines. Virgin Australia had the highest cancellation rate between Sydney and Melbourne.

That’s much higher than the average cancellation rate for May 2023 of 3% across all major domestic routes. It’s also higher than the long-term industry average cancellation rate of 2.1%.

Graph showing cancellation rates on CBR-SYD and MEL-SYD routes in May 2023
Cancellation rates on the Sydney-Melbourne and Sydney-Canberra routes in May 2023. The red line shows the average cancellation rate across all routes for the same month. Source: BITRE data.

In most cases, if an airline cancels your Melbourne-Sydney flight, it can re-accommodate you on another flight leaving within an hour or two. But with all the aisle seats already taken on the flight 30 minutes later, your carefully selected seat allocation could easily turn into a middle seat near the toilets.

So, why are the Melbourne-Sydney and Canberra-Sydney so disproportionately affected by cancellations?

Are airlines banking slots or consolidating undersold flights?

There are many reasons why flights might need to be cancelled, for reasons within and outside of the airline’s control. For example, a plane might need unscheduled maintenance or there may not be enough flight crew. But this applies to all routes, not just a few of the most popular routes in and out of Sydney.

Earlier this month, Canberra Airport CEO Stephen Byron accused Qantas in particular of scheduling more flights between Canberra and Sydney than it intended to operate in order to bank slots at Sydney Airport.

“What’s happening is [Qantas is] over-scheduling flights and then at the last minute just, the ones that don’t have enough passengers, cancelling at the last minute and consolidating them,” Mr Byron told ABC Radio Canberra.

“Sydney has a limited number of slots that are allocated for seasonal periods, and Qantas overbook them so that they’re not available to competitor airlines. The problem is that the slots are not taken away unless they cancel more than 20% of the [flights].”

Some frequent flyers have also speculated that many airlines – not just Qantas – consolidate flights with low bookings to save money.

QantasLink Dash 8 Q400s at Canberra Airport
QantasLink Dash 8s at Canberra Airport. Photo: Matt Graham.

Qantas strongly denied the claim made by Canberra Airport’s CEO.

“Canberra Airport knows full well that air traffic control shortages in Sydney are causing more cancellations, with flights on dozens of days so far this year impacted by the shortages,” Qantas told ABC Radio Canberra.

We’re not suggesting that airlines deliberately cancel undersold flights to save money. But if they wanted to, they could pretty much get away with it because Australia lacks EU-style delay compensation laws. Australian airlines don’t owe anything to passengers that they involuntarily move to later flights. The only real risk is unhappy customers and reputation damage if an airline does it too often.

Does Sydney Airport have a shortage of air traffic controllers?

Qantas isn’t alone in blaming chronic air traffic control shortages for flight disruptions. In February 2023, The Australian Financial Review reported that Airservices Australia was suffering from an usually high rate of absenteeism. Airservices Australia provides air traffic control (ATC) services at airports including Sydney.

Australian Frequent Flyer asked Airservices Australia whether a shortage of air traffic controllers was leading to a higher than normal rate of flight cancellations at Sydney Airport.

Airservices Australia is not able to comment on individual airlines or their scheduling decisions. But a spokesperson for Airservices Australia issued the following response to our question about ATC staffing:

Airservices Australia rejects claims the organisation has a shortage of air traffic controllers (ATCs) at the Sydney Terminal Control Unit (TCU). Airservices employs more than 900 ATCs at 29 of Australia’s busiest airports, 97 per cent of which are in operational roles. Airservices requires about 800 ATCs to fully staff the ATC network.

In addition, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) and Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) both recently confirmed that Airservices Australia does not have a shortage of ATCs at the Sydney TCU.

We require 47 ATCs for the Sydney TCU and there are 47 operational ATCs employed at the facility. Up to 13 ATCs are required to fully staff one shift.

In June 2022, CASA undertook a surveillance event at the Sydney TCU and did not raise any findings against Civil Aviation Safety Regulation (CASR) 172.110 in relation to ATC staffing levels at the Sydney TCU. Civil Aviation Safety Regulation (CASR) 172.110 is the requirement to have sufficient ATCs to safely manage aircraft.

CASA did raise a finding against CASR 172.115 in relation to supervisory positions, which we are currently addressing. These positions do not affect Airservices’ capacity to provide safe and efficient air traffic management services at the Sydney TCU.

Airservices Australia rejects the claim of staff shortages impacting flight schedules. But there are many other reasons airlines may need to cancel flights which may be related indirectly to “air traffic control”, other than staff shortages.

For example, there are often cancellations on windy days when Sydney Airport needs to operate on a single runway. An airline may also choose to cancel a flight in order to re-allocate an aircraft after ATC issues a “ground delay” due to airport congestion.

So, there’s no simple “one-size-fits-all” answer as to why flights get cancelled. It’s not necessarily the fault of ATC, nor the airline.

Airservices Australia has recently launched an Air Traffic Management dashboard on its website, where the public can see the organisation’s daily performance figures. This dashboard shows delays and cancellations that can be attributed to air traffic control, as well as other factors. “Other attributed” disruptions could be the result of anything from inclement weather to aircraft issues, airport capacity constraints and other operational decisions.

Cancelling a Melbourne-Sydney or Canberra-Sydney flight is less disruptive

Another reason that Sydney Airport is disproportionately affected by cancellations is the strict limit of 80 aircraft movements per hour. The airport cannot physically handle more traffic than this (nor is it allowed to). The airport also has a curfew. This leads to inevitable cancellations if there are disruptions such as extreme weather that delay a large number of flights.

When airlines inevitably need to cancel flights, they try to minimise the disruption to passengers. On busy routes like Melbourne-Sydney, there are so many flights that airlines can fairly easily move passengers to another flight leaving at a similar time. This could be as little as 15 minutes later during peak periods.

For example, if Virgin Australia cancelled a Sydney-Launceston flight, the next direct service probably wouldn’t be until the next day. That’s much more inconvenient for the passenger. It’s also more costly for the airline, which would probably need to provide meals and hotel accommodation during the delay.

In this scenario, if there was a mechanical problem with the aircraft scheduled to fly to Launceston, Virgin might pull an aircraft off Sydney-Melbourne and send it to Launceston instead. This minimises the overall disruption to its passengers and network.

Qantas and Virgin Australia 737s
If airlines have to cancel a flight, they prefer to do it on a route with lots of alternative options for customers. Photo: Jonathan Wong.

Similarly, if there’s an issue with a QantasLink Dash 8 aircraft in Sydney, it’s easier for the airline to cancel a flight to Canberra than to Moree. The next flight to Canberra might be less than an hour later, while there are only two daily flights to Moree.

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.
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A good article, but it omitted how in addition to the SYD aircraft movement limit of 80 per hour, there's a second one of 'no more than 20' IIRC during each quarter hour period. Apparently at times this creates additional delays.

I wonder if air traffic controllers are deliberately taking excessive "sick days" off, and co-ordinating this among colleagues as workers at the wharves have been known to do.

I'd be certain airlines cancel one flight if it's going to be poorly patronised on a high frequency route, provided it can handle the resultant passenger loadings in each direction. There doesn't seem a pattern to this: we might think that the xx15 and xx45 timetabled departures were the first to disappear, but that doesn't necessarily occur.

The punctuality on MEL-SYD-MEL, a separate problem, is also often poor. It never approaches the excellent level of many overseas high speed rail operators.

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Regarding the shortages of air traffic controllers, the holes in the Swiss cheese are well and truly lining up. How the complete mismanagement of air traffic control staffing is not front page news yet is shocking, despite the fluff word reassurances of AsA management. It’s about time some serious journalistic questions are asked of AsA and CAsA.

This thread on Pprune regarding large areas of airspace closure between Sydney and Brisbane for half the day today.
BN FIR TIBA 29 June 2023

And an ATSB REPCON by multiple controllers at Sydney almost pleading for something to be done, all dismissed by AsA (and CAsA by extension). I wonder how a crash would affect management KPIs and bonuses?
ATSB REPCON

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Flights over the MELSYDMEL were routinely being consolidated due loads when I was in the IOC and I quit in 2013.

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It's kind of a non article to be honest. On busy trunk routes anywhere this happens and is probably a combination of events....crew hours, crew availability, maybe loads and strategic re loading of pax, it happens say London to Glasgow or Edinburgh, Madrid to Barcelona, Frankfurt to Munich etc. Obviously it is easier to canx high density routes than those scheduled once or twice a day. I believe though in Australia crew absentee issues remain?

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If I had to choose who to believe on this issue - it wouldn't be Qantas....

Same goes for really anything else you might like to raise.

#SackGoyder

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If I had to choose who to believe on this issue - it wouldn't be Qantas....

Same goes for really anything else you might like to raise.

#SackGoyder

Yes, Mr Goyder by all accounts was well regarded when he was at Wesfarmers.

Note the past tense, though wary of going off topic.

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Taking the point of @PERLHR I hear a substantial part of the problem is caused by crew who cal in ‘fatigued’ at the last moment. They are able todo so if they feel that they aren’t fit to fly due to illness, tiredness or a multitude of other reasons. Some if it is related to Union actions too.

I have been on a SYD-MEL flight which was almost fully loaded when a FA decided they were fatigued and walked off…leaving the flight ultimately cancelled.

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Not MEL-SYD, but an illustration of some of the stress on the east coast ATC environment:

Domestic flight chaos blamed on airspace restrictions between Brisbane and Sydney

Dozens of flights have been cancelled or delayed along the nation’s east coast on Thursday due to a severe shortage of air traffic controllers that led to the effective closure of airspace to the south of Brisbane.

A Qantas spokesman said 100 flights had been delayed across the group, and 10 services were cancelled because of the airspace restrictions.

Virgin Australia was also hit hard. Flights to and from Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Ballina were forced to operate around the uncontrolled airspace, which added time and distance.

An Airservices Australia spokeswoman confirmed the airspace restrictions from 6am to 1.30pm on Thursday due to “short term, unplanned air traffic controller leave impacting en route airspace between Sydney and Brisbane”.

“During this period, we will manage the airspace safely by implementing internationally recognised procedures and continuing to provide a flight information service, a search and rescue alerting service and a safety alerting service using an air traffic controller who will monitor the frequency the pilots are operating on and surveil the airspace,” the spokeswoman said.

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As an ex-employee of the CAA (until Airservices), I can certainly understand the current staff being incensed at the death by a thousand cuts, but they also really need to think about upping their game to be on a similar operational level with those in the USA and the UK.

I guess it's chicken and egg really, so hope's out the window...

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Affected passengers should have the right to know exactly what the cause of the cancellation was. If airlines were required by law to provide this information alongside the cancellation notice, with standard consumer protection penalties for providing incorrect information, maybe this wouldn't be such an issue.

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