Rough return to the skies: How Qantas, Virgin performed in 2022

Between grappling with staff shortages, supply chain issues, the cost of fuel and the near-insatiable demand for flying, it’s fair to say the local airline industry’s return to the skies after COVID-19 has been challenging.

After a year of volatile airfares and performance, airlines and airports are now heavily scrutinised by a metric-savvy customer base quick to jump on any missteps. Due to capacity constraints felt by the whole industry, stock standard aviation issues such as a weather-induced runway reduction can turn a simple one-hour safety delay into a day-long saga.

But with 2022 coming to a close, just how well did the airlines go with their on-time performance and the number of cancelled flights?

As things stand, airlines still have a way to go before getting to the pre-COVID cancellation rate of 2.1 per cent and remain below 2019’s average on-time performance rate of 82.9 per cent. However, things have improved from April and July’s dismal rates.

Australia’s largest airline Qantas has worn the brunt of consumer anger at the industry’s less-than-optimal return to flying this year, but according to monthly government data released by the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE), Qantas outperformed rival Virgin Australia in terms of on-time domestic performance for seven of the past 11 months.

Qantas chief Alan Joyce said the airline has seen a “significant improvement” in performance in the last three months after conceding the industry failed to cope with the uncertainty of Omicron earlier in the year, “we’re back to pre-COVID levels of performance…way ahead of the competition. In October, we were the most reliable airline by far and that trend is continuing,” he told columnist Peter FitzSimons earlier this month.

Virgin was triumphant over its largest rival in April, May and June- but its performance across the board was well below pre-pandemic metrics as the sector struggled to cope with the uncertainty of Omicron and insufficient staffing.

Significant employee shortages at Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane’s airports earlier in the year did not help the airlines meet their performance goals, with Sydney Airport losing about half of its 33,000 staff during the pandemic, resulting in long queues, unhappy consumers and missed flights over April and July.