Australia’s busiest airport has been plagued with more disruptions for a fifth day in a row with more than 30 departing and arriving flights cancelled on Monday morning.
Airlines have cancelled 18 domestic services destined to land at Sydney Airport this morning – including from Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart, the Gold Coast and Griffith.
A further 13 flights scheduled to leave Sydney have been cancelled – with affected destinations including Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Hobart and the Gold Coast.
Flights departing Sydney have also been rescheduled, leaving one frustrated traveller in tears.
The cancelations are understood to be a knock-on effect from the weather-related disruptions that took place over the weekend.
Sydney Airport has been plagued with more disruptions for a fifth day in a row after more flights were cancelled. Pictured is Sunday’s chaos
A severe shortage of air traffic controllers – due to staff illness in Brisbane – has also contributed to widespread chaos to flights along the country’s east coast since Thursday.
The ongoing disruptions coincide with the start of the NSW school holidays.
One distraught traveller burst into tears after arriving at the airport to learn her flight had been cancelled, throwing her holiday into disarray.
‘I’m devastated, I’m sad,’ she told the ABC.
‘I want to go on my trip and it’s not working out for me.’
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‘I’m really stressed right now and there’s no resolution. We’re all confused.’
One man has been trying to get to the Gold Coast to visit his children since Friday but has had back-to-back flight cancellations.
He got up at 4am to get to airport, where he was notified his flight had been rescheduled by another two days.
‘I came here on Friday afternoon and it was cancelled while we were waiting at the bar. My bags were already checked in,’ he told the ABC.
At least 30 flights have been cancelled or reschelduled so far on Monday.
‘We had to retrieve our bags and spend $200 getting here and back plus extras, including car hire.’
‘Now we’ve been rescheduled to Wednesday. That’s half our holiday.’
It comes after hundreds of travellers faced lengthy delays after heavy winds brought flights to a standstill on Sunday.
A handful of flights were delayed or cancelled at Sydney and Brisbane airports.
It’s resulted in long queues for the check-in at both airports, as airlines desperately try to clear a backlog of widespread cancellations.
Around 2.3million travellers are expected to go through Sydney Airport over the next two weeks making it one of the busiest school holiday periods since pre-Covid.
