  Floquet codes are an intriguing generalisation of stabiliser and subsystem
codes, which can provide good fault-tolerant characteristics while benefiting
from reduced connectivity requirements in hardware. A recent question of
interest has been how to run Floquet codes on devices which have defective --
and therefore unusable -- qubits. This is an under-studied issue of crucial
importance for running such codes on realistic hardware. To address this
challenge, we introduce a new method of accommodating defective qubits on a
wide range of two-dimensional Floquet codes, which requires no additional
connectivity in the underlying quantum hardware, no modifications to the
original Floquet code's measurement schedule, can accommodate boundaries, and
is optimal in terms of the number of qubits and stabilisers removed. We
numerically demonstrate that, using this method, the planar honeycomb code is
fault tolerant up to a fabrication defect probability of $\approx 12\%$. We
find the fault-tolerant performance of this code under defect noise is
competitive with that of the surface code, despite its sparser connectivity. We
finally propose multiple ways this approach can be adapted to the underlying
hardware, through utilising any additional connectivity available, and treating
defective auxiliary qubits separately to defective data qubits. Our work
therefore serves as a guide for the implementation of Floquet codes in
realistic quantum hardware.
