On Monday, Qantas Domestic chief executive Andrew David criticised the airport’s heavy-handed tactics in dealing with the airline, which is its biggest customer.

“We deal with airports around Australia and around the world, and none of them behave the way Canberra Airport does. It’s bizarre,” Mr David said.

Jetstar Group chief executive Gareth Evans echoed these comments, as well as highlighting the prohibitive cost of flying into Canberra.

“There are two big obstacles that we would need to overcome to start Jetstar flights into Canberra,” Mr Evans said.

“Canberra Airport needs to significantly reduce their fees and they need to take steps to build the sort of relationship you would expect between a business and its largest customer.”

Jetstar is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Qantas.

Canberra Airport managing director Stephen Byron said such a strategy was disappointing.

“Jetstar is 100 per cent owned by Qantas. Qantas have always said if they fly here it will cannabalise their profits out of Canberra," he said.

“We are disappointed with their strategy. We want to build a better relationship with Qantas.

“We also know that, by standing up for the Canberra community and passengers that have been subject to historically high cancellation rates, we will face the full brunt of Qantas' PR machine."

Mr Evans said the economics of the route did not yet stack-up for Jetstar.

“Canberra Airport is expensive and we can’t make the economics work for a low-cost carrier," he said.

“Instead, we fly to 18 other airports around Australia who understand this.”

Canberra Airport had been hopeful of luring Jetstar to the capital for years, Mr Byron said.

“In 2016 they signed an agreement accepting the landing charges and pricing structure at Canberra Airport. Whilst that was being discussed, Tiger both accepted and agreed to start flying to Canberra and the tender was closed," Mr Byron said.

“We want Jetstar and Qantas in Canberra and so do our customers. We have spent years trying to entice Jetstar. In the end, it’s up to Qantas.”

Canberra Airport has been publicly at loggerheads with Qantas for months, repeatedly speaking out against the high cancellation rates plaguing flights between Sydney and Canberra.

Cancellations peaked in September last year, when a nationwide high of 8.1 per cent of flights were cancelled on the Canberra to Sydney route.

Mr Byron has described the pattern of cancellations as "unacceptably high".

Qantas has said the spike in cancellations in late 2017 was due to a combination of engineering issues and pilot shortages.

Mr David said, "Cancelling or delaying flights disturbs passengers and costs us money, so we have plenty of reasons to minimise them.

"Canberra Airport seems to think it's some sort of conspiracy and that they can publicly shame us out of it. That's simply not how it works."

The latest figures for the Canberra to Sydney route showed 2.9 per cent of flights were cancelled in March.

This showed an improvement of 5.2 percentage points since the route topped the nation for cancellations at 8.1 per cent last September.

Correction: A quote from Canberra Airport's Stephen Byron that previously said "historically low cancellation rates" has been corrected to now say "historically high cancellation rates".