CBR to MEL flight delays
Canberra (CBR) Melbourne (MEL)
6,230 flights · March 2025 – August 2026 · Australian Government BITRE
79.63%
Arrived on time
Within 15 minutes of schedule
3.4%
Cancelled
Share of scheduled flights
—
When late, late by
Average across delayed arrivals
—
Delay per flight
Averaged over every flight flown
What the record says about this route
Which airline you fly changes the odds here. Qantas arrived on time 16.9 points more often than Jetstar over the same period on the same route — same airports, same weather, same air traffic control. A gap that survives all of that is about how the two airlines are run.
Cancellation, not delay, is the risk worth pricing here: 3.4% of scheduled flights never operated. A late flight still gets you there. A cancelled one leaves you rebooking, and on a route with few daily departures that can mean losing a day.
This is one of the heavily flown routes in the record — 6,230 flights in the period. Frequency is itself a form of insurance: when a flight goes wrong there is another one within hours, which is not true of the thin routes elsewhere on this site.
The Canberra to Melbourne route sits close to the middle of the record — neither notably punctual nor notably late.
Which airline should you fly on this route?
Over March 2025 – August 2026, Qantas arrived on time most often on CBR to MEL. Jetstar was late most often. Flights ran closest to schedule in May and worst in December.
Every airline on CBR to MEL
Ranked by how many flights each one operated. A carrier with fewer than 100 flights in the period is listed but not graded.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Avg delay | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| QantasLink | 3,306 | 76.18% | 5.9% | — | D |
| Virgin Australia | 2,089 | 84.57% | 0.43% | — | B |
| Jetstar | 517 | 73.79% | 0.39% | — | C |
| Qantas | 318 | 90.71% | 1.89% | — | A |
Month by month
Share of flights that arrived within 15 minutes of schedule, by month flown.
The return leg
MEL to CBR Melbourne back to Canberra 80.03% on time COther routes from Canberra
What these figures do and do not tell you
Everything on this page is counted from the flights that actually operated on CBR to MEL during March 2025 – August 2026, as reported by the airlines to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics. "On time" is the federal definition: arriving at the gate within 15 minutes of the scheduled time.
A route's record is a description of the past, not a forecast. Weather, air traffic control and the aircraft's earlier flights that day drive most delays, and none of them are predictable from a historical rate. What the record does tell you is whether this route runs late more often than others, and which carrier on it has the better history — which is the part you can actually act on when you book.
Cancellations are counted separately from delays because they are a different problem for a traveller: a late flight still gets you there. How the grade is calculated →