Originally Posted by
Alex Whittingham
Shame indeed, but it is easy to catastrophise these failures. The airline market has been so good for so long that there are a number of highly leveraged and struggling airlines around that would not have survived in a harsher market. A correction like this, or 9/11, or 2008 is like the lions taking out the Wildebeest from the edges of the herd. Considering Norwegian and VA, for instance, they are both competing to an extent in the same market, and both were struggling in the best market for years. Likely at least one will go to the wall but the survivor will pick up the spare business when life returns to normal, hire extra crews etc. The bigger question is what 'normal' will be like in the extended period post-lockdown when it is v likely there will still be travel restrictions in place for how long? 9 months? a year?. Logan and Flybe are different cases, the government could take the position that supporting them is a duty to maintain regional connectivity in a post-lockdown market that may not naturally give them a working business case. It's a 'wait and see'. IMHO the MPL shiny school model is seriously fractured, but people forget over time...
This is a millions miles from 08 or 9/11. Both those times airlines still flew! Airlines here are not flying for months! When they do fly again, they are in effect having 3 winters in a row of buisness at best. At worst, 3 winters worth of traffic coupled with awful recession.
nas and vs are only competitors for about 30 of nas fleet. They will dump 120 airframes worth of 737 drivers on the market if it goes bust in its entirety. Probably 1200+ pilots. Where are they going to go? If they all go to ryr, that is 2 years of zero recruitment required at ryr for cadets.
We are going into a huge whammy of changes in customer behaviour far worse than 9/11 or 08 ever was.
Buisness are shrinking in terms of staff size and turnover, buisness traffic will take years to recover.
Companies have been forced to embrace remote working, they will now know its possible and works perfectly well, and less travel is needed in the future.
Many customers will be unwilling to travel, they do not want to queue at supermarkets,they will not want to sit in a tube, thats if they can afford it in the first place with the fact potentially 2m will lose their jobs according to the OBR.
Then we could also end up with this crazy idea of removing seats on aircraft for social distancing, driving up ticket fares, putting off more from flying.
You are absolutely correct in saying it is easy to turn this into a catastrophe. I think catastrophe is not a strong enough word for what is about to happen.
I cannot see the legacies needing to run a cadet course now for 10 years. Ezy are deferring orders, wizz laying off, ryr boeing fleet has not grown for 2 years now, lufty predicting years to recover with a permanent fleet reduction. The list is endless.
Stay away from training unless you have won the lottery!