We're not at the worst stage yet. After that is passed airlines will be at their most vulnerable. Only last night I was talking to the General Secretary of BALPA in the pub and he was talking about redundancies in the offing at a large Charter airline, Monarch have said 40 need to go, Virgin have 70+ on unpaid leave, BA have been offering voluntary redundancy, Lingus are getting desperate and the future for BMI is highly uncertain. It wasn't a comfortable discussion.
This is pretty bad already and it will continue to get worse until after unemployment peaks then falls for six months in a row, i.e. a sustained recovery in jobs. Airlines can limp on losing money for a suprisingly long time. But there will be failures. Wannabe prospects remain grim.
To add some positive news to this otherwise depressing thread- BA have indicated in the latest internal flight ops news that based on current projections, recruitment is likely to start again late next year.