iscover
Bad weather is threatening to hamper Sydney Airport’s preparations to survive the start of the NSW school holidays.
Yesterday, 42 flights were cancelled due to heavy rain, with 12 flights already called off before 9 am on Friday morning.
Domestic aviation continually broke all-time records for poor performance in April, June and July, but airports and airlines have spent the last few months recruiting more staff to cope with increased demand.
Victoria and Queensland were the first states to begin their holiday period last week and will now be followed by the ACT, NSW, the Northern Territory and Western Australia from 24 September, then Tasmania and South Australia on 1 October.
Qantas has repeatedly stated its service should be back to pre-COVID standards by September, while Sydney Airport has hosted two job fairs which have already helped fill 2,500 vacancies.
It comes as domestic passenger numbers surge back to almost 2019 levels with pandemic restrictions now almost entirely lifted nationwide.
Sydney Airport alone is forecasting that 2.4 million passengers will pass through its terminals from 19 September to 9 October, surpassing the 2.1 million passengers that were welcomed during the equivalent holiday period in July.
However, earlier this week, the business said it was “better placed than at any time” to handle the increased demand.
“All of the organisations across the airport have been working hard to rebuild their workforces and we are seeing improved operational performance on most days, but labour shortages are an ongoing challenge with around 4,000 open roles across the airport,” said CEO Geoff Culbert.
“The school holidays will test us again, and we are expecting the terminals to be busy during peak periods, especially Thursday, Friday and Monday mornings.
“We will have more than 60 additional customer service staff in the terminals every day guiding passengers and bringing people forward in order of flight priority at peak times.”
The increased staffing numbers already appear to be paying off for both Melbourne and Brisbane Airports, which reported significantly less disruption this week than during previous end-of-term breaks.
“The recent work the airlines have been doing to improve their operational performance is starting to show in their on-time data, and our team is doing what we can to support them,” said Melbourne Airport CEO Lorie Argus.
Qantas has also been bullish about its improvements, which has seen its on-time departures leap from 45 per cent in July to 62 per cent in August.
New BITRE data released on Wednesday by the Department of Transport appears to back up internal data released by Qantas, showing its performance is slowly recovering.
Qantas on-time arrivals increased from 47 per cent to 62 per cent, while cancellations dipped from 5.6 per cent to 4.7 per cent.
Across the entire industry in August, on-time arrivals stood at 68.5 per cent and departures at 68.8 per cent, compared to 55 per cent and 54 per cent, respectively in July.
The report warned that despite improvement, the figures are still “significantly lower” than the long-term performance, including pre-COVID data.
