Qantas had big plans for 2020 and it was poised to commemorate its 100th anniversary this year. Chris Frame describes how the COVID-19 outbreak has put a hold on those plans and how the airline is coping with it.

Major celebrations were planned for Qantas’ centenary. These included commemorative aircraft liveries and a new inflight safety video that traced its 100 years of flight. Early next year was also to see a farewell to the Boeing 747 fleet, marking the end of an era for the ‘flying kangaroo’. But by March 2020 it was clear things weren’t going to go as planned for the airline, with the impacts of natural disasters and a global pandemic taking hold across Australia and the world.