Starting next week the vast majority of Australia's aeroplanes and the people who operate them will be sitting idle, grounded by the coronavirus pandemic.
Qantas and Virgin Australia, and their budget arms Jetstar and Tigerair, are parking 355 aircraft at airports around the country, leaving around 90 jets to transport essential workers and supplies.
Jetstar planes being parked for storage at Avalon Airport, near Geelong, on Friday. Credit: Jason South
Meanwhile more than 28,000 pilots, cabin crew and other workers have been stood down - many with no idea when their next pay cheque will arrive - and that number is set to grow.
The COVID-19 outbreak is "the single biggest shock that global aviation has ever experienced", Qantas boss Alan Joyce says. The International Air Transport Association calls it "apocalypse now" for airlines.
Travel restrictions have made aviation one of the industries hardest hit by the pandemic, with the extent of the economic and human cost hinging on how long lockdowns last.
Already it has raised questions about how the financially struggling Virgin can survive the downturn. Its future, industry experts say, largely hangs on whether the government is willing to bail out a mostly foreign-owned company in order to save 16,000 workers from Australia's growing dole queue, and save consumers from a Qantas monopoly.
Qantas chief Alan Joyce (left) and Virgin Australia CEO Paul Scurrah pictured last year in friendlier times. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
How our aviation industry looks at the end of the crisis "depends on the extent to which the government is going to intervene to make sure that the existing entities can survive," says Peter Harbison, chairman of respected industry research firm CAPA - Centre for Aviation.
"We do need to have two airlines in this country, it’s very much in the public interest," he says.
The question of government support boiled over in an ugly spat this week between Qantas boss Alan Joyce and Virgin's Paul Scurrah.
Confident his airline can wait out the pandemic unassisted, Joyce was on the front foot against his smaller rival warning government against bailing out a company "that have been badly managed for 10 years”. He later encouraged Qantas staff to lobby their local MP against helping Virgin, telling them on a conference call that government wasn't there to "support a company that’s owned by Singaporeans, Chinese, Abu Dhabi and a British billionaire".
More than 350 Qantas, Jetstar, Virgin and Tigerair planes will be grounded. Credit: Wayne Taylor
(Joyce himself begged government for $3 billion unsecured loan and a debt guarantee six years ago as Qantas struggled amid a brutal capacity war with the then ascendant Virgin. The Abbott government knocked him back.)
Joyce's meddling prompted Scurrah to write to Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims asking him to investigate Qantas' conduct, which he said could cause "immediate and irreparable damage to a competitive Australian air passenger transport industry".
For his part, Scurrah says he is pushing government for "industry wide" support which he says will be needed for the travel and tourism industry - which employs more than 600,000 people - to make it through the crisis. “Our sector is going to need some support for us to get through. Every single airline in the world is talking to their government about support," he told this masthead.
Transport minister and Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack has announced one $715 support million package and is weighing up what, if any, further support it might provide.
Labor has called for action and raised particular concerns about small regional airlines, which have warned air links to regional and remote communities could be permanently severed.
Other countries have come to that party in a major way, with the United States government on Thursday night extending a $US61 billion ($102 billion) lifeline to the nation's airlines.
Despite doomsday predictions from airlines, John Thomas - a veteran aviation executive and director, and former Virgin Australia group executive - says crises like this one were an unfortunate reality of the airline industry which have happened before and will happen again. "It’s a fact of operating in a high fixed-cost business in an industry that has black swan events,” he says.
Thomas wouldn't be drawn on potential airline failures, but said Australia was big enough to always support two full-service airlines.
"After the demise of Ansett, we returned to two viable major airlines in a relatively short period of time, providing Australian travellers with choice and providing employment opportunities for many who were unfortunately displaced after Ansett’s demise," he said. “The notion of supporting airlines for long-term job protection just doesn't make sense because the industry will rebound and those jobs will be needed.”
Should Virgin fail, industry watchers say Air New Zealand is an obvious candidate to enter the Australia's domestic market and go head-to-head with Qantas. The Kiwi carrier built up a 26 per cent stake in Virgin between 2012 and 2016.
Singapore Airlines, which owns 20 per cent of Virgin, is another likely contender and a $US10 billion ($16 billion) raising on Friday sparked speculation it might be positioning for a takeover.
CAPA's Harbison says trying to tackle a Qantas monopoly once established - with 100 per cent of the market and control over premium airport landing slots - would be a major barrier to entry for any new rival.
Even if the Virgin-Qantas duopoly remains intact, the aviation market will be much smaller for some time and have a "considerable amount of government involvement", he says.
International airlines would also be slow in returning capacity into Australia. “I'd be surprised that in the first two or three years out of this that the global airline market is 50 per cent of where it was last year," he says. And he says it will probably never fully recover unless there were structural changes, such as loosening ownership laws to allow for more mergers between airline groups.
Qantas and Virgin will have stopped all international flying by Sunday and are scaling down to just a handful of domestic flights daily, equivalent to about 10 per cent of their normal network.
With virtually no new bookings, Qantas and Virgin have tried to cut costs to preserve their remaining cash by sending home the bulk of the workforce, standing down 20,000 and 8000 workers respectively (or 70 per cent and 90 per cent of their employees).
Virgin said 1000 of those workers will be made redundant, including all pilots at its low-cost arm Tigerair, and all pilots and cabin crew based in New Zealand.
Stood-down workers can use leave entitlements. Once exhausted, they won't be paid at all until the crisis is over. The Transport Workers Union, which represents baggage handlers and ground crew, says it is akin to "workers bailing out the airline".
Unions representing pilots and engineers wrote to government this week calling for support for workers to be included in any further industry assistance, amid a wider union push for Australia to follow Britain in paying workers 80 per cent of their salaries if they are laid off because of the pandemic.
Pilots and engineers also called on government to do everything possible to ensure a “viable and competitive aviation industry” following the downturn.
The pain for workers has extended beyond the airlines themselves, with travel agency group Flight Centre standing down 3800 Australia workers on Thursday.
So how long can Australia's airlines last while in virtual lock down? Virgin has $900 million cash available to see it through, and Scurrah said the capacity cuts and staff stand-downs were intended to make that last "for long as possible".
Credit Suisse analyst Paul Butler this week estimated Virgin could burn $860 million of its cash by June, and would need another $829 million next financial year. “Virgin likely requires additional liquidity to be comfortable about surviving the current COVID-19 crisis,” he wrote in a note to clients.
Virgin is 90 per cent owned by the government-controlled Singapore Airlines and Etihad Airways, Chinese groups HNA and Nanshan, and Richard Branson's Virgin Group.
Credit ratings agency S&P says those shareholders are unlikely to support Virgin through the crisis given they all face their own financial woes. "A default or distressed exchange appears increasingly likely over the next 12 months, absent timely government or other support and/or a swift reversal of the COVID-19 outbreak," the agency said on Thursday while downgrading Virgin further into "junk" territory with a CCC rating.
Meanwhile analysts at Citi estimated last week that Qantas could last six to 11 months without flying before it has to reduce its cost base, take on more debt or raise equity. Qantas this week raised $1 billion in fresh debt to help see it through the crisis, secured against 11 Boeing 787 Dreamliners it bought with cash over the past three years.
Investors are licking their wounds all the same. Qantas' share price is down 53 per cent since February 20, while Virgin's already languishing stock has slumped 30 per cent to previously unseen levels.