WA budget estimates hearings this week heard reports service quality is impacting health care in Esperance, with Nationals MP Peter Rundle saying over a 10-day period in late February and early March, 42 out of 70 Rex flights to Esperance were either cancelled or saw delays of more than 30 minutes.

Michael Jones, who was behind three NASA launches in Australia last year, said there’s “a lot of complexity that doesn’t appear to be there” and hinted traditional vertical blast-offs are more successful.

SIA will put on a fifth daily flight to Sydney from December, extend its A380 service to Melbourne for an extra month before adding a fifth daily flight from November, and bring four additional flights per week to Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth.

Only two flights scheduled to depart Canberra before 9am are believed to have taken off on time – Qantas flight 1513 to Melbourne and FlyPelican flight 312 to Newcastle – with others either cancelled or delayed by up to several hours, according to FlightRadar24 data.