CANBERRA – Australia’s airlines are struggling to stick to their domestic schedules.

The major carriers managed to depart on time 80.6 per cent of the time - down 6.3 percentage points on the previous year.

Only 78.8 per cent of flights arrived on time, down 6.8 percentage points, while 1.7 per cent of all flights were cancelled, up from 0.8 per cent.

Virgin Blue achieved the highest level of on time departures for 2007–08 at 80.3 per cent, while Qantas achieved 79.1 per cent, and Jetstar 78.4 per cent.

Of the routes which met the criteria for on time performance reporting for all 12 months in 2007-08, the Canberra–Adelaide route had the highest percentage of on time departures (90.9 per cent), while the Perth–Brisbane route had the lowest (62.1 per cent).

Cancellations were highest on the Melbourne–Sydney route (11.5 per cent), followed by Sydney-Melbourne (11.3 per cent), Brisbane–Sydney (10.4 per cent), and Sydney–Brisbane (10.3 per cent).

New figures show the number of passengers carried on domestic flights in Australia reached 49.98 million in the last 12 months, an increase of 7.6 per cent on the previous year.

A total of 23.5 million passengers flew into and out of Australia - an increase of 1.1 million on the previous year.