Hard landing: Qantas job cuts reveal coronavirus-hit aviation's depth of woe

Qantas CE Alan Joyce’s talk Thursday about “rightsizing” the airline put a brave and euphemistic face on the grim reality facing the entire industry. Stripped of its corporatese, Joyce’s statements painted a dark picture of aviation’s future: no international flights for a year, the biggest planes mothballed for three, thousands of jobs cut and tens of thousands more hanging in the balance if government support is withdrawn in September. Numbers released by Qantas as part of a $1.9b capital raising also show that the airline’s cash pile was dwindling by about $9.5m a day between late March and the end of May, as planes sat idle due to travel restrictions. That’s a little under $3.5b a year, although the cash burn rate should be lower once about 40% of Qantas’s domestic routes are once again operating, which the airline hopes will happen by the end of 2020. The capital raising will leave Qantas with about $3.6b in the bank, giving it a buffer of more than a year, even if lockdowns return and the burn rate returns to that peak. But, as Joyce explained, more problems loom in September. That’s when the government’s emergency jobkeeper program, which Qantas is relying on to help pay its 30,000-strong workforce (shortly to become 24,000), is due to expire.<br/>