Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce’s talk on 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mothballed for three, thousands of jobs cut and tens of thousands more hanging in the balance if government support is withdrawn in September.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 $1.9bn 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 $3.5bn 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 $3.6bn 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.

Economists, from Reserve Bank chief Philip Lowe down, agree that cutting off jobkeeper as planned will send Australia’s already battered economy off a cliff, but until Thursday, there was little sign prime minister Scott Morrison was minded to extend it.

And while government bailouts are routine overseas, with US$113bn committed by sovereigns worldwide to keep airlines alive according to data compiled by aviation consultants Ishka, the Morrison government has so far refused to mount any significant rescue effort.

(A series of tax and fee cuts nominally worth $715m doesn’t count, since to be of any value it relies on planes continuing to fly, which they are mostly not.)

Confronted by Qantas sacking 6,000 workers and keeping another 15,000 on stand-down, Morrison said that “jobkeeper or other measures” could be used to support the aviation industry past September.

On Thursday, Joyce said Qantas had been having “good discussions” with the government about extending jobkeeper.

But time is running out, and not just for Qantas. The entire industry is bleeding. Companies will need to make financial decisions by the end of the financial year on 30 June, which is next Tuesday.

The government has denied jobkeeper to thousands of workers for dnata, which does catering and cleaning for the airlines, on the basis that the company is foreign-owned.

And Virgin Australia has already gone into administration after its pleas for government help were repeatedly rejected – amid a vigorous campaign against aid for the airline mounted by Joyce.

Virgin’s future is now in the balance, with administrators due to make a decision this week on which of two bids should go forward for approval by creditors at a meeting next month.

Until recently, the government has seemed serenely optimistic that the market would take care of Virgin and it would fly again. It took until last week for ministers to realise the outcome was not so certain (and pre-emptively blame the administrators for failure).

Michael Kaine, the national secretary of one of the bigger unions covering the airlines, the Transport Workers Union, sounded close to despair when he looked at the bigger picture on Thursday.

“It is because of government restrictions that aviation was grounded to a halt, yet the assistance and assurances have been paltry,” he said.

“Qantas is now making hasty decisions to slash jobs which will affect thousands of families while Virgin is still limping along.

“Because the government is refusing to provide any certainty past September we are seeing the aviation industry go into freefall.”

If concern for 6,000 jobs already lost and the potential for tens of thousands more to come won’t shift Morrison’s thinking, perhaps self-interest will.

It’s no secret that politicians love the benefits of the Qantas chairman’s lounge. If Morrison and his ministers want to ensure it will still be there in coming years, they should think about acting swiftly.