"They will come out leaner and meaner and that’s a big challenge for us because the margin[advantage] that Qantas had is really important,"Mr Joyce said."If Virgin were able to overcome that cost base advantage,that’s a long term threat to Qantas."

There were both"opportunities and challenges",however,and Qantas had already seen a number of Virgin's corporate customers jump ship. Qantas said that it expects its share of the post-recovery domestic market to grow from 60 per cent to 70 per cent given Virgin has announced plans to trim back its fleet and shut its budget arm Tigerair.

Qantas'net after-tax loss of $1.9 billion was driven by a $1.2 billion write-down of its Airbus A380 superjumbos,which have been sent to deep storage in the Californian desert for at least the next three years.

Excluding write-downs and one-off costs Qantas remained in the black at an underlying level,reporting a $124 million profit,down 91 per cent from last year.

Sondal Bensan,an analyst at Pendal Group,which is Qantas’ largest shareholder,said Thursday’s key revelation was that the company’s weekly cash burn of $50 million in the second half came from balance sheet-related items and paying down debt - not its operations.

"The key is that whilst you’re waiting for the recovery there’s not a huge cost as a shareholder - you're not losing a lot of franchise value while you’re waiting for borders to reopen,"he said.

Qantas said it collected $267 million in payments through the JobKeeper scheme,with the majority going to stood down workers and the rest used to subsidise the wages of staff continuing to work. It received another $248 million through aviation-specific government support schemes. There was a net benefit to Qantas'bottom line of $15 million from the $515 million in total government support.

Qantas did not declare a final dividend. Shares closed flat at $3.76.