Stop obsessing about the oil price. Its a red herring. The real issue is outlined by Albert Edwards, chief strategist at Société Générale speaking this week:
"We see a deep global recession. Growth prospects in the Eurozone, Japan and the UK have deteriorated. Most now accept that recession has already begun in all three,". Mr Edwards predicted a "collapse" in emerging markets next. "You ain't seen nothing yet," he said.
Red herring?
It's what created this slowdown.
Consumers saw prices of anything go up because of high oil prices while the usual result of a credit crunch is a reduction in prices and a deflation.
The problem in the U.S. is that while there was deflation, prices went up creating a huge price crisis.
Forecasting the future is very difficult and many top analysts have been wrong many times in the past.
Your data on Japan is inaccurate.
Japan has recorded a GDP growth of 3.3% in Q1.
Q2 is expexted to reduce to around 2% which is still very far from recession.
All you're trying to do is to reach the "see, I was right" level based on raw prophecies by "top managers". So far you have been proven wrong with traffic and capacity growth at airlines all over Europe.
You said that people were going to stop travelling this summer according to your prognoses WWW.
You have been so wrong:
The Association of European Airlines has released traffic and capacity data for its members in June 2008.
Following a better-than-expected set of results in May, the June figures more clearly reflected the depressed situation of the market. Year-on-year traffic growth slowed to 1.6% which, coupled with a 4.0% increase in capacity, led to a substantial fall in load factor, by 1.9 percentage points to 77.4%.
Decreases were recorded in Domestic operations (-6.7%) and on the North Atlantic (- 0.2%). The normally buoyant European cross-border markets grew by 3.2% and Europe-Far East by just 0.5%. Regions which continued to post strong growth were the South Atlantic – which, at plus 10.3% nevertheless suffered a heavy loss in load factor – and the Middle East, with +6.9%.
Preliminary results for July, based on weekly reports, indicate a growth figure perhaps a percentage point better than in June, driven by a slight recovery in North Atlantic and Far Eastern flows, although both remain substantially depressed. Load factors are expected to show a further decline, although less dramatic than in June.
There's a traffic
growth of 1.6% and airlines have been adding 4% capacity compared to the same month last year.
Airlines are adding capacity faster than their traffic is growing, lowering load factors and potentially lowering airline earnings (unfortunately we don't have yield figures and airlines have been charging higher fares, so we can't really judge on that).
What is the real indicator of pilot jobs?
Capacity increases.
For European ab-initio's the capacity increases on European routes are the most representative of new pilot jobs. The capacity growth was 2.8% in June on European routes, which means that supposing that there's 10 000 pilots flying these routes already, in June alone a rough 2.8% or 280 new ab-initio's had been hired to cope with the capacity increases. (Supposing that average seating of aircraft added compared to average seating of aircraft already flying the routes is similar or equal plus equal or similar aircraft utilisation (km flown/month)).
You have predicted capacity reductions, traffic reductions over the summer but you have been proven wrong. Face it, admit it and stop pretending you know everything.
Do that in the cockpit with your submissive first officer about knowledge on F-coms or operating procedures, but you can't do that on the complicated subject that is economic forecasts on an internet forum.