REELING from public discontent, Qantas has formed a crisis committee to combat chronic flight delays and has hired top political consultants to assess its damaging image problems.

The number of Qantas flights leaving within three minutes of their scheduled departure times has reportedly dipped as low as 37 per cent in recent months -- and below 70 per cent under a broader 15-minute international standard. Both figures are below accepted international performance standards.

Disquiet over Qantas service prompted the federal Government to consider putting pressure on airlines to publish records of flight delays, as is the case in the US.

While defending Qantas's service and safety record, executive general manager sales and marketing John Borghetti admitted the airline was aware of growing passenger discontent. ``There is no doubt our on-time performance needs to improve,'' Mr Borghetti told The Australian. ``A Qantas team, including a number of senior and experienced executives, is working on a range of initiatives to improve on-time performance across our network.'' Qantas has employed Crosby Textor, the polling and research consultancy run by Liberal Party pollster Mark Textor and former Liberal Party national director Lynton Crosby, to assess its image problems. Several federal politicians have been interviewed by the consultancy, including Country-Liberal MP Dave Tollner. The Northern Territory MP, who flew frequently between Darwin and Canberra, said he had been brutally frank with the researchers. ``They asked for positives, and I said safety,'' he said. ``They asked for negatives and I said lost luggage, delays, unscheduled overnight stays, high prices, monopoly -- you name it, I said it.'' Mr Tollner said ``at least a quarter'' of Qantas flights were late and another quarter resulted in lost luggage. Sources said the Qantas performance review had been operating for more than a month. Mr Borghetti said: ``We have made significant progress, but we know more work needs to be done.'' He said Qantas -- which carried more than 27million passengers last year to 76 destinations in 33 countries -- was still struggling to cope with post-September 11 changes in Australia, especially the demise of Ansett. He admitted Canberra had ``special punctuality issues'', including fog, which required particular attention. He said that despite estimates that world airlines would lose $US30billion ($46billion) in the two years since the World Trade Centre attacks, Qantas had invested $7billion in new aircraft and other infrastructure. A source said Qantas records showed roughly 85 per cent of Qantas flights now arrived within 15 minutes of schedule, which was ``good by world standard''. A spokesman for Transport Minister John Anderson said smaller carriers were pressuring the Government to force airlines to release their punctuality records to highlight their superiority over Qantas. Performance indicators for the top 10 US airlines are published regularly by the US Transportation Department. ``It's something we're seriously looking at,'' the spokesman said last night.