Qantas wins domestic on-time stakes in 2025-26

BITRE data for last month also showed that 84.8 per cent of QF-tagged flights departed on time in June and 83.8 per cent arrived on time, with two per cent cancelled, compared to 80.8 per cent on-time departures, 79.4 per cent on-time arrivals, and 1.2 per cent cancellations for VA flights.

“The result was also 3.4 percentage points higher than the previous financial year, and 5.4 percentage points higher than FY24,” the airline said.

It comes after global aviation analytics firm OAG named Qantas the world’s most on-time major airline in June, ahead of Avianca and IndiGo.

“Getting more customers away on time is a team effort across every part of the operation, from engineering and operations to airports and our technology teams,” said Qantas Domestic CEO Markus Svensson.

“We’ve seen consistent improvement in our on-time performance over the past few years and it’s a credit to our teams that we’re now regularly among the world’s leading airlines.”

“An 81 per cent on-time rate is the best we’ve delivered since 2019, and it’s translating directly into how customers rate their experience with us, which is also on the rise.”

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“We know we can’t get complacent and in aviation each day brings new challenges, which is why we’re continuing work on improving our reliability and better supporting customers when things don’t go to plan.”

For its part, Virgin noted that it had the lowest cancellation rates across the major airlines for the financial year, and continued to highlight its strong completion score.

“Virgin Australia achieved a strong completion rate in June of 98.8 per cent, despite weather and air traffic control impacts. Departure on-time performance for the month was 80.8 per cent, remaining above the airline’s six-month average,” a spokesperson said.

“Across FY26, we delivered a completion rate of 98.7 per cent, our strongest result in more than a decade, and the highest among the major Australian airlines.

“We also increased our average scheduled daily flying activity year on year, meaning more flights operated and fewer cancellations for our guests.

“We remain focused on improving schedule resilience and delivering a reliable experience for our guests as we move into FY27.”

On-time performance and completion rates across all airlines also beat the long-term averages for the third consecutive month.

On-time arrivals (per cent)

• All airlines – 81.1
• Qantas and QantasLink – 83.8
• Virgin Australia and VARA – 79.4
• Hinterland – 93.1
• Qantas – 84.6
• QantasLink – 83.4
• Long-term average – 80.5
• Virgin Australia – 79.5
• Skytrans – 78.3
• Virgin Australia Regional Airlines – 77.5
• Jetstar – 76.9
• Rex – 76.2

On-time departures (per cent)

• All airlines – 81.9
• Qantas and QantasLink – 84.8
• Virgin Australia and VARA – 80.8
• Hinterland – 95.7
• Qantas – 87.8
• QantasLink – 83.1
• Long-term average – 81.6
• Virgin Australia – 80.8
• Skytrans – 80.6
• Virgin Australia Regional Airlines – 79.8
• Rex – 78.6
• Jetstar – 75.0

Cancellations (per cent)

• All airlines – 1.5
• Qantas and QantasLink – 2.0
• Virgin Australia and VARA – 1.2
• Virgin Australia Regional Airlines – 3.7
• Skytrans – 2.5
• QantasLink – 2.4
• Long-term average – 2.2
• Rex – 1.5
• Qantas – 1.3
• Virgin Australia – 1.2
• Jetstar – 0.9
• Hinterland – 0.4