Melbourne Airport chief executive Lorie Argus said last week that it was time for the federal government to increase the number of open skies agreements with other countries to make it easier for foreign airlines to fly here.

Culbert also doubled down on previous allegations that the local airlines are deliberately axing scheduled flights to fend off competition for slots, pointing to Sydney Airport’s domestic recovery, which has been stagnant for the past 15 months.

“We continue to see evidence of unused slots going to waste, with a persistent mismatch between slots held by domestic airlines and the schedule that is flown,” he said.

It’s the second time in two months the airport boss has called out Qantas and Virgin Australia for what he deems to be slot hoarding.

Qantas said last month it “completely rejects” the notion it is hoarding slots at Sydney Airport.

Airlines are required to operate at least 80 per cent of their allocated slots to keep them. Qantas said it uses more than 90 per cent of its slots.

“There does seem to be some misdirected frustration from Sydney Airport because they wish the system was different, and they could unlock more revenue. We understand that, but we’re not sure demonising your biggest customer is the way to go about it,” Qantas domestic chief Andrew David said this month.

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Flight cancellations are sometimes inevitable as a result of issues such as weather and staffing problems. Hundreds of flights out of Sydney Airport were affected by weather-related issues in the past two months, forcing the airport to switch to single-runway operations multiple times.

A total of 3.8 million passengers passed through Sydney Airport in July. About 1.3 million travellers came on international flights, meaning the international recovery has overtaken domestic for the first time since COVID-19 restrictions were relaxed.

Chinese travellers returned in July to being the biggest group of foreign passport holders at the airport for the first time since COVID-19. Before the pandemic in 2019, 1.4 million Chinese tourists spent $2.1 billion in Australia. Last week, China lifted a ban on group tours travelling to various countries including Australia.

The number of South Korean nationals through Sydney Airport has increased 20 per cent on the same corresponding period in 2019, reflecting the increased popularity of the Seoul-Sydney route, which is now flown by five airlines instead of two.

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