Passengers flying with Virgin Australia and Dutch carrier KLM are suffering some of the biggest disruptions to travel as the understaffed aviation industry struggles to cope with a resurgence in demand, schedules show.
Zeroing in on a group of 19 airlines around the world — the same one Qantas Airways uses to assess its performance against peers — Virgin Australia canceled the biggest proportion of flights in the three months through July 26, according to data from analytics company Cirium. It axed close to 2,200 flights, or 5.9% of its schedule, compared with 1.4% in the same period in 2019.
Air New Zealand, Sydney-based Qantas and Deutsche Lufthansa, Europe’s biggest airline, rounded out the five that canceled flights most often in the period. Singapore Airlines Ltd. had the best record, scrapping just 0.1% of planned services.