Grounded!

As a regular traveller for business and pleasure, I've been watching the aviation sector's response to COVID-19 with interest. Some recent "never thought I'd see that" moments include:

1. Singapore Airlines is now flying 9 planes (out of 147 in its fleet).
2. Qantas now flies the giant A380 nonstop from Darwin to London. Yes - Darwin.
3. The only scheduled commercial flight between Australia and North America next week will be one daily United Airlines’ Boeing 787 between Sydney and San Francisco.
4. Air New Zealand now flies three times a week between Sydney and Auckland (normally its busiest international route) instead of 5 times a day.

This is the stuff of science fiction...

UPDATE: 9 April

Another extraordinary news headline tonight. Virgin Australia, Australia's second-largest airline, has suspended all domestic flights except for one daily Sydney to Melbourne return service. The flight will run daily except for on Saturdays.

To put this announcement in perspective, prior to the COVID-19 crisis, the Sydney to Melbourne route was the world's third busiest scheduled service. More than 5000 seats were available for sale every day in 2018 alone. Almost 9.3 million passengers flew the route that year. Virgin is also an airline with a fleet of more than 130 planes. It's now flying just one of these twice a day.

Virgin had previously cut its network to 10 per cent of its normal schedule as coronavirus travel restrictions obliterated demand. Its new reduced schedule takes effect from tomorrow, with all other flights through to June 15 cancelled.

UPDATE: 12 April
Qantas has announced that it's reduced its flying fleet to just three aircraft. According to CEO, Alan Joyce, the airline will essentially fly a Qantas 737, a Jetstar A320 and a QantasLink Dash 8 on a handful of primary routes until further notice.

For example, the once-crowded air corridor between Sydney and Melbourne, which typically sees around 50 Qantas and Jetstar flights each day, has been reduced to just five flights per week from 10 April.