New airline landing more flights on time

Jetstar says more than 80 per cent of its flights are arriving within 15 minutes of schedule.

The airline says its on-time performance throughout last month was 79 per cent, up from around 20 per cent in its first week of operation when it was plagued by weather and systems delays.

For the week ending August 8, just on 83 per cent of flights arrived within 15 minute of their scheduled time.

Jetstar is the third domestic airline to issue July figures this week but all measure punctuality differently.

Air NZ says 86 per cent of its flights left within 10 minutes of schedule and Pacific Blue says 91.4 per cent of its flights left within 15 minutes of schedule.

All airlines say they would like a consistent official standard introduced, similar to the system run by Australia's Department of Transport.

But associate transport minister Nathan Guy said the Government had no plans to introduce the Australian system of compulsory public release of on-time performance figures.

"However, there is nothing to stop airlines making this information publicly available," he said.

The airlines' own figures do not take into account cancellations, and all delays beyond 10 or 15 minutes are treated equally, even though in some cases they can stretch for hours.

Chief executive Bruce Buchanan said most of those services delayed during the reported period were because of bad weather in Queenstown, to which Jetstar operates a daily direct service from Auckland and Christchurch.

The airline, like Pacific Blue, has only three aircraft and any problems can snowball during the day.

Unlike Air New Zealand, their planes are not equipped to use Queenstown in low visibility.

Mr Buchanan said development of an advance "required navigation performance" system for Jetstar aircraft had started.

It was expected the fleet would be fully equipped from next winter.