Pacific Blue challenges rivals to show on-time performance

Low-cost airline Pacific Blue is adding another wrinkle to the contest for New Zealand's flying public.

The Christchurch-based subsidiary of Virgin Blue said that from today it would publish information on its website showing how well it was sticking to its timetable. It challenged competitors Air New Zealand and Jetstar to do the same.

The ploy comes after Qantas-owned Jetstar ran into trouble sticking to its schedule after starting flights between Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown last week, replacing Qantas on the routes.

Jetstar rejigged its schedule, and today spokesman Simon Westaway said that once it had a month or so of flying under its belt it, too, would be publishing its on-time performance figures.

In its statement today, Pacific Blue said that in Australia, airlines had been required since 2003 to report arrival and departure statistics monthly to the Department of Transport and Regional Services, which published the results.

On-time performance (OTP) was measured as all flights that departed within 15 minutes of their stated departure time, with no exceptions made for bad weather, air traffic control, delays from suppliers, unscheduled maintenance, consequences of previous delays or anything else.

Pacific Blue also said it was surprised last week to read reported comments from Jetstar chief executive Bruce Buchanan that Jetstar typically met on time performance targets up to 90 per cent of the time in Australia.

Pacific Blue general manager, commercial Adrian Hamilton-Manns said: " We think Jetstar is being a little generous with the truth because that is certainly not the case on their domestic Australian routes".

"A quick check on Jetstar's own website shows that for the past two months - April and May 2009 - their OTP was only 78 per cent."

Westaway said Jetstar's OTP in Australia had not been as strong as previously in the past couple of months, due to a range of factors including weather, and some aircraft issues.

- NZPA