Is QantasLink reliable?
Ranked 46 of 94 US airlines on on-time record.
138,409 flights · March 2025 – August 2026 · US Bureau of Transportation Statistics
78.49%
Arrived on time
Within 15 minutes of schedule
3.37%
Cancelled
Share of scheduled flights
—
When late, late by
Average across delayed arrivals
—
Delays it caused itself
Rest was weather, ATC or security
Reading QantasLink’s record
Cancellation is where QantasLink stands out, and not well: it cancelled 3.37% of its flights against a median of 1.21% across the airlines here — 2.8 times the typical rate. Cancellation is also the outcome that costs a traveller a day rather than an hour, and the one that triggers a refund entitlement where delay does not.
The extremes are far apart. On EMD to BNE it arrived on time 91.58% of the time; on SYD to MEL the figure was 45.79%. Same airline, same fleet, same procedures — which is the clearest argument on this site for checking the route rather than the carrier.
QantasLink sits mid-table, which for an airline's punctuality is a better outcome than it sounds.
Each axis is a percentile against the other US airlines in the same period, not an absolute score. Further out is better than most; nearer the centre is worse than most.
QantasLink in five measures
An airline's headline on-time rate hides more than it shows. Two carriers can both arrive on time 75% of the time while one is late by twelve minutes and the other by an hour, or while one is evenly mediocre everywhere and the other is excellent on most routes and dreadful on a few.
These five axes pull those apart. Each is scored against the other US airlines in the same period rather than on an absolute scale, because on-time rates cluster tightly enough that raw numbers would draw every carrier as the same shape.
Same everywhere is the one worth reading twice: it measures how far QantasLink’s on-time rate moves from route to route. A carrier scoring low there has an average propped up by routes you may not be flying.
QantasLink month by month
Its most reliable routes
- EMD → BNE Emerald to Brisbane 91.58%
- PLO → ADL Port Lincoln to Adelaide 91.24%
- MKY → BNE Mackay to Brisbane 89.17%
- BNE → EMD Brisbane to Emerald 88.64%
- ADL → CBR Adelaide to Canberra 88.52%
- ADL → PLO Adelaide to Port Lincoln 87.84%
- PER → ZNE Perth to Newman 86.28%
- ASP → ADL Alice Springs to Adelaide 85.99%
- PER → PHE Perth to Port Hedland 85.89%
- NTL → BNE Williamtown to Brisbane 85.77%
Its worst routes
- SYD → MEL Sydney (Mascot) to Melbourne 45.79%
- SYD → MCY Sydney (Mascot) to Maroochydore 56.66%
- MEL → ADL Melbourne to Adelaide 57.95%
- SYD → ADL Sydney (Mascot) to Adelaide 58.59%
- BNE → MEL Brisbane to Melbourne 61.6%
- SYD → HBA Sydney (Mascot) to Hobart (Cambridge) 62.98%
- MEL → LST Melbourne to Launceston (Western Junction) 66.75%
- MCY → SYD Maroochydore to Sydney (Mascot) 68.15%
- OOL → MEL Gold Coast to Melbourne 69.08%
- HTI → BNE Hamilton Island to Brisbane 69.23%
How QantasLink compares
Figures cover March 2025 – August 2026 and are counted from the regulators' own published files. A grade describes the past and is not a prediction about a particular flight, nor a safety rating. How the grade is calculated →