Greybull/Monarch was a precedent for this, wasn't it? As soon as an airline defaults on its debts and cannot renegotiate, it is bust, it loses its operating licence and it's slots are put back in the pot without recompense? The obvious solution is to have a fire sale of the slots prior to pulling the plug, but it would be tricky to convincingly keep the airline solvent while doing this. (Edit - I forgot that greybull did eventually get the slots on appeal, on the basis that some parts of monarch could still be considered an "air carrier")
The other parallel is Thomas cook's bond holders, who in the normal way would have first dibs on liquidation assets - and if they stood a good chance of selling on the most valuable assets - the slots - I very much doubt they would have agreed to the crippling D4E swap, which has the 2022 bonds trading at about 14c in the euro. Then you have the CDS market saying 'hang on a minute' - and what might initially seem like a simple shuffling around of debt, assets and equity, suddenly becomes fraught with problems
Last edited by Joe le Taxi; 13th Sep 2019 at 08:53.