Qantas Group Lead December 2009 OTP Figures

[Daniel F]

LCC have a very tight turnaround time. So one delayed flight will delay the entire day's schedule. Whereas with Qantas, their turnaround times are longer so even if one flight is delayed, they can easily catch up.

[D Chan]

generally the case but not always. The most obvious sign is to look for utilisation rates of the 737 fleet as a comparison. Don't forget about aircraft swaps + fleet size as well - should it be required aircraft swaps can take place as well.

[Chris W]

For on time departures;

QF - 89.1
QLink- 87.9
ZL - 86.4
DJ - 83.8
JQ - 83.3
TT - 76.3

And on the cancellation rate, ZL actually had the lowest of all airlines at 0.1% (or 7 cancelled flights from 5,361).

[Daniel F]

I've never understood why on-time departure figures are reported. Does it really matter if the flight leaves on-time... what really matters is whether the flight arrives on time.

I've been on Perth-Sydney red-eye flights where the departure has been delayed to make sure the flight doesn't arrive before the curfew is lifted. The flight still arrived on time.

[Marty H]

Daniel OTP performace is of very high importance to all airlines. Planes at mojar ports such as MEL SYD BNE need aircraft to depart ontime for such reasons as gate allocation for inbound aircraft.

[Daniel F]

But that's something the airlines and airports can deal with themselves. What's the reason for making departure stats publicly available? The public doesn't care... they just care about the arrival.

[D Chan]

\
you are right to an extent, but there's also the factor of weather and air traffic condition (e.g. airspace congestion) at the arrival airport. Yes, at the end the flight will probably arrive late due to the above reasons, but this may be due to issues beyond the airline's control AND this is something which will affect other carriers arriving at the airport at the same time.

Whereas I think ontime departure is important because this is something which airlines have significantly more control over, e.g. turnaround, boarding, catering / cleaning, loading of baggage/ULDs/Freight etc. I tend to think passengers will be more disgruntled if their aircraft was sitting on the ground for half an hour after their scheduled departure time etc. Also if a flight departs late and they have to make up lost time, 1) they burn more fuel doing so going above CI (Cruise Index) http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aer...icle_05_3.html, 2) they may not catch up for the delay sufficiently, 3) disgruntled passengers, 4) if the schedule is tight e.g. min turnaround time the aircraft may arrive late to destination and the delays may flow on continually and have a flow on effect to the following flights the particular aircraft is patterned to fly (and it may take several flights for the aircraft to catch up to schedule

Why is on-time departure important? Chances are if a flight departs late (>15 min after scheduled departure time), I am willing to bet there is significantly less chance for the aircraft to arrive on time as well. However if the flight departed on time I think there is a greater chance for the flight to arrive on-time, unless of course if there were the need to divert due to weather-related, or the flight gets held up in the traffic pattern if the airspace at the arrival port is extremely busy, or other factors. Adding to this, on-time departure is often seen as the level of reliability of the airline or its fleet, this figure in part includes the number of technical delays per departure (one possible measure of dispatch reliability)