Virgin Australia, for the fourth consecutive month, has been regarded as the country’s most punctual airline, the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics, or BITRE, said.

Data BITRE released on Monday showed Virgin's planes were 90 percent on time arriving or in February. It specifically managed to depart 91.6 percent within 15-minutes of schedule and to land 89.2 percent of flights on time. The list also had Qantas in second at 89 percent, Jetstar at 84 percent and Tigerair at 82 percent.

BITRE added that since November 2014, Australia’s second largest carrier has had the highest on time percentage among all Australian airlines. The recent findings were a marked improvement Virgin got embroiled in a scathing scenario where every third of its plane got delayed because of a newly-implemented reservations system two years ago.

An unidentified Virgin spokeswoman told News Corp it was a pleasure to know the company has been consistent and led the major carriers in on-time performance for the fourth consecutive month. “On time performance is always a key priority for Virgin Australia, demonstrated by the recent strong results,” she said.

On-time departures for February (percent)

Virgin 91.6

Qantas 90.1

Virgin Australia Regional 90.5

Rex 89.6

QantasLink 88

Jetstar 84

Tigerair 83

On-time arrivals for February (percent)

Virgin 89.2

Qantas 88.2

Virgin Australia Regional 87.6

QantasLink 86.3

Rex 85.8

Jetstar 84.9

Tigerair 81.2

(Source: BITRE)

Meantime, among Australia’s airports, the one in Perth gave off the best result of departures and arrivals on-time, at 93.1 percent and 91 percent, respectively. In contrast, it was Hobart that gave off the poorest performance. It was revealed nearly one in four flights were delayed on departure and 17.7 percent of arrivals landed over 15 minutes behind schedule.

There are over 3000 domestic services operate daily in Australia. The busiest is the Sydney-Melbourne route, followed by Sydney-Brisbane, than Brisbane-Melbourne. Gold Coast-Sydney is next and Melbourne-Perth the fifth busiest route.

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