Qantas admits it 'has work to do' as the Roo falls to number two

Our national carrier, affectionately dubbed 'The Roo', has been pipped at the post not once, but twice by its closest rival when it comes to flying on time.

If you want to get to your destination as scheduled, it's increasingly looking like Virgin Australia will get you there faster than the red boomer.

The latest Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE) data shows the Virgin Australia network (including its regional airlines) out-flew the Qantas network (including QantasLink) across all on-time performance indicators in January 2025.

Virgin recorded 76.9 per cent for on time arrivals compared to 75.6 per cent for Qantas.

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Virgin beat Qantas in on time departures with 77.7 per cent compared to 75.6, and it had fewer cancellations at a rate of 0.9 per cent compared to Qantas' 2.4.

Virgin also beat Qantas in December 2024, with 74.7 of its services departing on time compared with 73.7 per cent of Qantas'.

A Qantas spokesperson told ACM: "While our operational performance has improved significantly over the past few months, there is still work to do to get more customers to their destination on time."

"Our people have put in a lot of hard work to improve our reliability and our February month-to-date performance is back near the long-term average," they said.

Virgin Australia Chief Operations Officer, Stuart Aggs, said it was important to be reliable during the holiday period when people are travelling to see family and friends.

"In addition to improving our on-time performance, we have recorded consistently strong completion rates, with more than 99 per cent of Virgin Australia's scheduled domestic flights operating in December and January. This is despite some weather-related challenges caused by summer storms," he said.