Hmm. You know who else is going to need a bailout. Everyone who is unable to work. From the experience of what happened with bailouts in 2008, I hope out of work people get money before the airlines do, but I won’t count on it. Not when the shits are running the shit show.
They aren’t asking for sympathy, just some sweet, sweet, nsa government money. How many people who own airlines are also friends of Trump? That should give us a fair idea of how that will shake out.
Interestingly on this side of the Atlantic, EasyJet, Ryanair and IAG (BA’s holding company) all made great play of how much cash they have in the bank; whilst tax dodger and inveterate public-subsidy leech Richard Branson immediately called for an industry bail out from his apocalypse bunker on Necker Island.
I’d send them thoughts and prayers but I’m not sure if those are allowed in cabin baggage.
How about a loan, to be paid off post-pandemic. With interest.
I just don’t understand why they can’t be propped up by investors. Clearly, they’ll recover and move back to profitability after this thing becomes manageable. Let the market come to their rescue. That’s literally the point of the GodDAMN stock market
Write your congressional representatives and senators right now to tell them that you will tolerate no bailout for airlines.
These are the same airlines that will literally punch a doctor in the face, knock him out, and drag his limp body off the flight because they can sell his seat for more money.
I can think of no business less deserving of a bailout than airlines.
Good point. Bailouts create perverse incentives not to prepare next time, but I hadn’t considered the properly-prepared company being a leveraged buyout temptation.
Gif tribute to the poster child of LBOs and asset stripping: Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital
This is less an Airline bailout as it is an indirect subsidy for the Boeing Company IMHO.
Boeing is desperate for air frame sales right now and just gave up it’s Washington state bennies to the tune of a 40% tax cut loss. to settle a European trade dispute. What better way to boost the economy with one stone for two birds. Boeing is the World’s largest importer / exporter of goods. A healthy Boeing bouyed by plane sales, absent for the past two years, will move the stock market upward.
Airlines don’t need a bail out nor do they deserve one but, they do need new airplanes.*
*Airplanes that work mind you. Which may leave Boeing cold.
Boeing has had a stock uptick for four years.
And Boeing didn’t split. And then Boeing bought back more stock.
They all took the risk. And in OCT 2019 ~$390/share … today $129/share. They had options.
Boeing chose unwisely.
And Big Airlines’ lobby-buck war chest will make damn sure that the bailout bucks (our money) keeps them afloat so they can live to charge you $30 for that extra bag.
My name is dontpanicbobby and I approve this message.
The reason they need a bailout is that they are already loaded with debt and can’t pay the interest during the crisis. They would be under water post-pandemic.
A loan would amount to a gift to their existing creditors, who would otherwise be screwed.
Agreed. What they are suggesting sounds dangerously like the communistic madness Obama engaged in during the 2008 crisis. Don’t they understand that, by surviving by such means, they will be forever corrupted and that it’s better that they be ineluctably crushed out of existence than accept the cold embrace of bailouts and socialism?
Jacques, please fetch my good guillotine.
Does planning to ask for $50 billion count?
You want Trump administration cronies running airlines? We really are all going to die.
Well, they’ll have to pay the govt. appointed management, and their employees, including their normal management. And, besides, the best way to prepare for these events is to retain the best and brightest. So bonuses is it!
You’re right: none of what I wrote makes sense when it is completely robbed of context. 
