NC,
I’ve always respected your opinion and do this time too. But any good pilot solves a problem by clarifying what the problem is. While a vaccine will undoubtedly save many lives, the problem the airline industry faces is the same problem every business and family is facing. A financial one, and the virus has let the debt bubble genie out of the bottle. Putting the cork back in won’t help.
With respect you’ve spent virtually your entire working life as either a public servant or at an airline that has run itself like a good government bureaucracy. Your above calculations could have come straight from Canberra. Back in the real world in a major recession most people get hurt badly. Those that are fortunate enough to keep their jobs do so on a lowered remuneration package while watching their perceived wealth vanish as asset prices drop, leading to banks issuing margin calls and the spiral dive begins.
It takes a few years for a recession to be reflected in unemployment numbers and the negative influence this has on expiring EBA’s. (Only public servants get their 2 to 3% a year regardless of what’s happening in the real world).
The belt tightening hasn’t really started as it generally doesn’t until the pay check falls or disappears, but when it does then aviation, tourism, business spending etc drops off dramatically.
This pandemic hasn’t occurred in a vacuum. There was a very good reason the world entered 2020 with money being virtually free for anyone who wanted it. The world economy was completely broken. Once the virus is controlled the world economy will still be broken, just even more so. Believing we can simply reset to a previous date like resetting a computer is overly simplistic. Even if we could do that, why pick a date when it was broken anyway? Why not pick a date when things were semi normal. Pre-GFC would be a good start. And that would be my guess as to the size of most airlines post-virus.