It's not all doom and gloom for Virgin. While its domestic EBIT has almost halved, largely because of the 2nd half of FY19 which saw an EBIT loss of A$43.3m, it is still trending in the right direction and it is still positive over the full year.
The big problem with the VA results was international EBIT, which was a loss of A$75.6m over FY19. Over the past 9 years, international EBIT has been positive on just 3 occasions, which compares to 6 for domestic. If we look at the FY19 loss at the PBT line, which was A$295.3m, over half of this was due to impairment losses on cash-generating units. You often see new CEOs declare these impairment losses in their first year as a one-off, leaving a cleaner slate for the following year. They usually come about because the written down value of aircraft assets on the balance sheet don't align with the market value of those assets with the difference requiring a write-off. Qantas did exactly the same thing in FY14 with a A$2.56b impairment.
The fuel cost per ASK outcomes are an interesting comparison between QF and VA. Virgin's fuel cost per ASK has increased by around 0.80 cents over the past 2 years while QF's has increased by just 0.50 cents. That is a big difference, perhaps reflecting different approaches to fuel and FX hedging.