The head of Canberra Airport has called on the new chief executive of Qantas to sort out the "massive disruption" on its Sydney-Canberra route.
On newly-published figures, the national flag-carrier cancelled one in 10 of its flights between the two cities in October. That is slightly down on previous months (when cancellations were around 12 per cent of Qantas flights) but remains much higher than the industry norm.
The Canberra Airport chief executive Stephen Byron said the failure to get cancellations down to an acceptable level meant "there is little to no reality to the promised change in approach at Qantas" offered by the new chief executive Vanessa Hudson.
She moved from being financial officer to chief executive after her predecessor Alan Joyce left in the wake of the allegation by the regulator that Qantas had been selling tickets for flights it had already cancelled.
"Essentially, the same executive team at Qantas is delivering the same appalling service to customers - how is the Board changing the brand reputation without fixing the problem?" Mr Byron said.
In the past, Qantas' cancellations on this route have been worse than on any other of its routes in Australia. On the latest figures, this has changed. On Melbourne to Sydney, for example, the cancellation rate was 12.1 per cent in October.
"It is well-recognised in the aviation industry that an 'acceptable' cancellation rate is generally two to two-and-a half per cent," Mr Byron said.
"Despite months and months of high cancellation rates, Qantas do not seem to be concerned for passengers flying between Canberra and Sydney and have not taken any effective steps to rectify this problem.
"The new Qantas CEO, Ms Hudson, needs to fix this problem and honestly communicate her plan for delivering a proper level of service reliability to customers who are paying exceedingly high airfares," Mr Byron said.
Qantas operates around three-quarters of the flights from Canberra. Mr Byron said this meant it "faced limited competition".
"Qantas's antipathy to the problem of excessively high cancellation rates between Canberra and Sydney and also from Melbourne to Sydney indicates that there is little to no reality to the promised change in approach at Qantas from their new CEO," Mr Byron said.
On the Canberra-Sydney cancellation figures, the airline often uses high-frequency routes like this one to switch aircraft to other, lower-frequency routes (like to Darwin or Hobart) if they need to.
Qantas said that bad weather was responsible for many cancellations across the country.
"We know how important it is for our customers to get away on time and we're focused on making sure we deliver on the experience our customers expect," a spokespersons said.
"Severe weather caused more delays and cancellations in October, with weather impacting flights on all but six days for the month.
"We remain the most on-time major airline, leading our main competitor for a 14th consecutive month."
