The government is looking to make improvements to the aviation industry through the Aviation White Paper. CHOICE will be contributing to this process and we want to hear from you so that we can represent your experiences and push for a better outcome for Australian consumers.
We want to know what it has been like to fly in Australia and overseas in the past 12 months. Your response, including anonymised quotes, may be included in CHOICE’s submission and online content, and in other ways to help campaign for stronger consumer protections. Names will be changed to protect your privacy.
All through this argument the airlines have blamed weather or matters outside their control for cancellations. How is this even a controversy any more, surely there are statistics on the reasons for cancelled flights, are there no facts to settle the question? If not, why not?
I see numbers and charts on which airports and airlines have cancelled flights and I see qualitative description of the reasons flights are cancelled but no numbers on the numbers of cancellation by reason. If I have missed it please direct me.
Would you trust the ‘reasons’ anyway? Weather? Maybe. ATC? Maybe. Engineering problems or crew issues? Maybe. Slot management? Maybe. I suggest you approach the authors for the clarity you seek as anything we can add +/- will be mere conjecture regarding the numbers as well as the veracity of the reasons.
I suggest that would be a waste of time because surely he (and many others) would have used such figures if they were available.
He is supposed to be an expert in quantitative airline economics or aviation management. I find it puzzling that he does not seem to regret the lack of key data or explain it but quietly works around the problem. His paper lacks impact because of this.
Obviously I don’t, it’s an assumption. One should not produce a paper that goes into quantitative analysis of the cost of some policy change without demonstrating firstly that the problem in focus actually exists and showing how big it is. In this case the allegation that airlines lie about the reasons why they cancel flights.
This is like arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin before you show that angels dance, or exist at all.
BITRE ( Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics) doesn’t have the data that I can see. The ACCC report on airline competition waxes on about rates of cancellation and the consequences but has no numbers on the reason why.
Webber goes on to tell us that the 80/20 rule ought to be replaced by a 95/5 rule but without knowing how many cancellations are within or without the airlines’ control we don’t know if that rule is achievable. Obviously some things are not the airlines’ fault, shortage of air traffic controllers or bad weather both have some effect, how do we know all such reasons total less than 5%?
In my view settling that comes before you discuss desirability of a new rule and before attempting to estimate the financial consequences to the industry or the customer.
