Virgin Blue cancelled the most flights out of any Australian domestic airline last year, while Tiger Airways had the most late-running planes. Qantas had the best record when it came to on-time departures while regional airline Regional Express had the least cancellations.
New research from the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics for 2010 found Qantas flights were on time nearly 86% of the time, followed by Virgin Blue at 83%, Jetstar at nearly 81%. Tiger Airways, meanwhile, was only on time 72% of the time.

Virgin Blue had the highest percentage of cancellations at 1.5%, while Regional Express had the lowest at 0.2%.

A Tiger Airways spokeswoman said most of its delays were within just 15 or 30 minutes and as the airline continues to grow, economies of scale will help in its on-time performance.

“Most disruptions to the flight schedule are outside the airline’s control or are mandatory (due to aircraft requiring technical or engineering assessment or due to weather conditions for example),” she said.

“Tiger Airways believes reliability should be viewed as a combination of punctuality (on time performance) and cancellations.

“Tiger Airways’ cancellation rate is consistently amongst the lowest of all the major domestic carriers in Australia (arguably the most important factor for travellers).

Overall, 83% of flights departed on time last year – down slightly from the previous year – and 1 per cent of all scheduled flights were cancelled.

The route between Sydney and Melbourne had the most cancelled flights at 3%, followed by the route between Canberra and Sydney, the Gold Coast and Sydney and Brisbane and Sydney.

Newman Airport in Western Australia had the most on time departures for the year, while Proserpine Airport in the Whitsundays had the most planes departing late and the lowest percentage of on-time arrivals.

Last year Tiger Airways cancelled 195 flights, compared to Virgin Blue with 2173 cancellations, Jetstar with 605 and Qantas with 1156 cancelled services.