The number of people flying in and out of Canberra Airport every day has fallen to only double figures, putting a question mark over its future.
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"The question is: how do we put it to sleep?" managing director Stephen Byron told The Canberra Times.
On Tuesday, only 39 passengers flew in and 47 passengers flew out.
Sources at the airport said on Saturday only 19 passengers flew in and 62 flew out.
The terminal has a capacity of 22,000 passengers a day.
It's been gradually flying fewer and fewer flights as state borders have closed, but the latest figures are so low it's understood the owners may consider shuttering the airport.
"One of the reasons we continue to shut down and gradually put the business to sleep is that there is no plan, there is no pathway and there is no hope," Mr Byron said.
"How do you plan for a future when there is no prospect of state borders reopening before Christmas? This is going to stay the same for months and months, and there's no way to change it."
"We are in a stage 5 lockdown in this industry," he added.
The construction industry in Victoria was operating at 25 per cent capacity, he said, so "why can't the domestic aviation industry operate at 25 per cent capacity?"
"There are literally tens of thousands of people in this industry who don't know what can change to give them a chance to go back to work and earn a living and feed their families."
Mr Byron said that NSW would continue to have outbreaks of COVID-19, "and they are going to kill the industry". His argument is that the government should weigh the economic and human damage of halting a big industry against relatively small risks.
Sources said Qantas was currently receiving government subsidies but the airport was not.
That means the airline may well want to continue flying, but it would be for the airport to look at the stark financial cost of servicing planes which are all but empty.
Canberra Airport's owners have already decided to close it on Saturdays, and are strongly considering shutting it down on Tuesdays.
Even before the latest disastrous figures, passenger numbers had fallen by 99 per cent.
The owners have called on the federal government to devise a "national aviation recovery plan".
"We simply can't keep functioning when aviation travel is down to around 1 per cent of pre-COVID-19 passenger numbers," head of aviation Michael Thomson said.
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The airport now feels like a ghost town, with shops which were due to open remaining closed instead.
Capital Brewing's plan to open a bar at the airport was in doubt even before the latest passenger numbers.
The company's managing director Laurence Kain said while operators were doing everything they could, any changes to flight schedules were not good.
"If there's not a lot of flights, there's not a lot of people coming through to buy beer," he said.
The airport has enacted a raft of measures to try to get some trade.
One proposal is to get flights between Canberra and Wellington, two cities which at the time the idea was floated had no cases of COVID-19.
That foundered when the New Zealand government baulked at taking passengers from Australia at all, given the possibility of Canberra acting as a backdoor for the virus between the two countries.
Flights from Melbourne were still taking place until the new outbreaks there.
Earlier this month, Virgin Australia announced 3000 jobs would go as part of a restructure.
Qantas announced 6000 job losses and grounded a large number of aircraft.
Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
