Originally Posted by
polax52
Prior to open skies in Europe, Airlines such as Monarch or Britannia were only able to run charter flights to agreed holiday destinations. They could not just say we're now going to operate a scheduled service from e.g. Gatwick to Malaga. The bilateral that would exist between the UK and Spain would be the agreement that BA can fly a certain number of scheduled services to Madrid and in return Iberia could run a certain number of scheduled services to London. It is that level of relationship we'll start at when Britain leaves the EU.
I agree with your first reply to me that this is unlikely to happen because at any cost we must obviously have a deal with the EU. If not the following Airlines, to name a few, would almost certainly be bankupt;
DHL UK
Flybe
Jet 2
Easyjet UK
Ryanair in the UK would stop operations
If somebody could tell me that there is some other Bilateral arrangement that I don't know about then I'd be pleased to hear it, because I want to be wrong. If I'm right then for this reason alone, a no deal Brexit is unacceptable.
Willie Walsh say's that anybody who believes the above is living on cloud cuckoo land, does he say that because he has to for the sake of the IAG share price? or does he say it because he knows there's going to be a deal?
It seems likely that keeping planes flying will become a bigger issue than the Irish border by the end of this year. Airlines operate on such fine margins and require such high rates of cash flow that just the suggestion of groundings may cause a hiccup in reservations and possible subsequent insolvencies.