Tiger our most reliable airline as Qantas drops

Fewer commercial passenger flights took off or arrived on time last month, when Qantas grounded its fleet for 46 hours due to an industrial dispute.

New figures show on-time departures and arrivals on all routes in October were down from the previous year.

Airlines averaged 80 per cent for on-time departures and 79 per cent for arrivals, the figures from the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics show.

Those results were down from 81.2 per cent and 79.7 per cent, respectively, in October 2010.

As well, cancellations in October accounted for 2.6 per cent of all scheduled flights, which was above the historical average of 1.2 per cent since the data began in November 2003.

At Qantas, 76.4 per cent of its flights left on time while 77.3 per cent arrived on time.

Qantas had the worst percentage of cancellations - 8.6 per cent - of the major airlines.

Tiger had the highest proportion of on-time departures among the major domestic carriers in October, at 84.7 per cent, with 82 per cent of its flights arriving on time and no cancellations.

But this came mainly as a result of a cut-down schedule after the budget airline was grounded by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) for six weeks mid-year.