I routinely fly to Hobart to visit an elderly relative and equally routinely I have had my Jetstar flight cancelled because of 'Engineering issues' - usually the last flight out in the evening on a Sunday. I am fortunate because I stay with family but for all those who don't - a 'budget style' airline soon becomes very expensive. I have often missed early morning meetings. I've found this lack of reliability worst in Hobart but almost equally bad in Newcastle and Sydney. The last straw for me was when my daughter and I booked a flight to Sydney to see a Kate Blanchett play. I got a message to say that our11am flight was cancelled and I was now on the 4pm flight. This meant I would miss a lunch meeting in Sydney so I rang up to change this to be told that that there was NO 4pm flight and that I was actually on a 7pm flight which would mean we would miss the play. I asked to be changed to an earlier flight and received an SMS that put us on a flight in 70 mins and meant we had to leave immediately to be able to catch the flight - this now meant missing an early meeting I had in Melbourne. This is outrageous and entering into any discussion with Jetstar is like 'talk to the hand - you chose a cheap flight, your problem'. The one thing you need from an airline is reliability - I REFUSE to fly Jetstar now and have been happily flying Virgin and Tiger for the past 6 months - even although you queue with Tiger - they are polite and always fly - I've never had a cancellation wither either Virgin or Tiger. With so many engineering problems I wonder that CASA hasn't seriously investigated them. My nephew flew to Vietnam on Jetstar on Monday - and guess what it was delayed 2 hours - he nearly missed his connection - he's now another convert to anything but Jetstar.