Virgin Blue 'most reliable airline'

[Greg McDonald]

From NEWS.COM.AU:

VIRGIN Blue passengers have a greater chance of departing and arriving on time than those using other major domestic airlines, an industry report shows. During April, 87.3 per cent of Virgin Blue's departures and 87.6 per cent of its scheduled arrivals were on time, the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics said. Its flight cancellation rate was 1.4 per cent.

In the same period, the on-time departures and arrivals and cancellation rates for the other major domestic carriers were: Qantas (86.4, 86.9 and 2.6); Jetstar (75.5, 77.2 and 0.8); and Tiger Airways (72.2, 69.2 and zero).

Of the regional domestic airlines, QantasLink led in on-time departures, followed by Skywest. Skywest pipped QantasLink marginally for the best on time arrival performance.

The report on 49 competitive domestic routes showed of the three biggest airports, Brisbane performed the best.

[Grahame Hutchison]

VIRGIN Blue passengers have a greater chance of departing and arriving on time

The DJ / QF departure difference was only 0.9% and arrivals difference 0.7%, that's stretching the "Greater Chance" story just a little. These figures are hardly going to persuade me to swap airlines.

[Andrew M]

Even Tiger airways are at 73% for March.


http://www.tigerairways.com/au/en/on...erformance.php

[Ash W]

As they say Graham, lie, darrn lies and bloody statistics.

With anything like this you can twist it and read how you like or in the case of news papers to push what ever barrow they want to push to sell their papers. Without the headline the percentage is so small it is negligible.

[Grahame Hutchison]

Always good to remember that todays newspaper is tomorrow's fish and chips wrapper.

[Nigel C]

Now those were the days! Then someone decided the ink wasn't good for us anymore and they stopped doing it.

[Greg McDonald]

Not at my local they haven't!! I reckon they taste better too!!

[Nigel C]

Hmmm...interesting! I should start petitioning my local to start wrapping them in it again!

[Philip Argy]

Here's the official BITRE OTP Report for April 2009:
http://www.bitre.gov.au/publications...Apr%202009.pdf

And for those who want to check the raw data to see if the reported differences are statistically significant, and consistent over a longer period, here's the full time series from November 2003 to April 2009:
http://www.bitre.gov.au/publications...(Master)_m.xls