One of Australia’s largest airlines, Virgin Australia, has announced about further cuts of its domestic schedule to 90%. The hit of still spreading coronavirus is too massive for aviation to adequately cope with it.

Last week the carrier said that it will suspend all international operations starting 30 March to 14 June, 2020, and reduce its domestic services by around 50% until 14 June, 2020. However, the situation over the period of less than a week has showed that even more drastic measures are needed.

After evaluating the current demand and revising its schedules, Virgin Australia has decided to further slash domestic operations to 90%. This also includes immediate suspension of all domestic services operated by Tigerair Australia, an Australian low-cost airline owned by Virgin Australia.

This way, from midnight 27 March to 14 June, 2020, Virgin Australia will stop flying to 19 Australian destinations and retain services on only 17 routes. These will by mainly flown for the purpose of transporting essential services, critical freight and logistics, the company said in a statement.