It might surprise you, but Christmas isn’t actually the worst time to fly) if you live in Australia. The long-held belief that the festive travel period was chaos has been replaced with turmoil of a more natural type.
According to Federal Government aviation statistics, the month of June is actually the worst month to fly out from Australia. This is because of the disruptions and cancellations caused by bad weather conditions.
July is the second-worse ranked month for the same reasons.
The main culprit is fog. The humble fog Sydneysiders see stretched out from the Harbour Bridge, all the way across to the Blue Mountains is the biggest disruption to aviation scheduling.
Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, along with Sydney, all suffer from fog, leading to delays and disruptions at the airport.
These main cities experience the highest number of foggy days in June and July, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
This Federal Government data was analysed by finder.com.au, who discovered there were 12,294 cancelled flights in June, since 2010, compared with 11,183 in July over the same period.
The storm seasons of December and January ranked third and fourth for flight cancellations.
May had the lowest number of cancelled flights, making it the ideal time to travel according to this data.
March and November were also well ranked as better times to travel.
If this data is anything to go by, we will be skipping a mid-year break this time around.
