Australia: Airlines forced to cancel thousands of flights in July as outbreak spread

Australian airlines were again forced to cancel thousands of flights throughout July as Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs COVID outbreak began to cross domestic borders. According to the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics On-Time Performance report, a total of 31.8% of all scheduled flights were cancelled in July, with 9,351 flights cancelled. It nears the 9,406 flights that were cancelled in June, almost 25 per cent of all scheduled flights for the month, following the beginning of the Delta outbreak in Sydney mid-June. June was noted by BITRE as seeing the highest number of flights cancelled in one month since reporting began in 2003. While most states had already slammed their borders shut to NSW travellers in June, the sustained high levels of cancellations came as over 12 million Australians were plunged into lockdown, as the virus spread between states. By mid-July, South Australia, Queensland and Victoria had all introduced snap ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown orders. Compared to July 2020, when the country began to exit its first nationwide lockdown, just 4.4% of flights were cancelled, according to BITRE.<br/>