Skytoddler
Part of the point is we are willing to help the company out with no reward. We have loyalty because the company was a good one, and we have faith that it is likely to be bought out. Of course I come here to put my view of this across. There are domesayers like you here and have been spreading gloom for weeks as a ill-juded reaction, the other view needs to be put across.
The airlines have laid off large numbers of people, but relatively few of those are pilots. Yes some have lost sponsorship, some have early retirement, but the point is the latter are uneconomic to employ in airlines. One example you gave was Gill, but when they went bust their routes were taken over within two days - so people still have to fly them. I understand business aviation is doing well, as companies trust their vital personnel to them. Even airline business is fairly buoyant. Regionals lost some at first but reported recovery within two weeks (from an analyst who had spoken to all the UK airlines), transatlantic business and middle-east business has been badly affected, but is recovering. It's nay-sayers in the media that caused the problems - there is no nderlying weakness.
If you talk to the industy analysts (an independent analyst, ex-OATS, came to talk to us weeks ago) this will recover, and fairly quickly. He was talking 6 month to two years. Then there is a forecast of critical pilot shortages. The analyst pointed out that airline sponsorship programmes fell off at every slump, and every time this caused a lack of pilots. He emphasised that this is not unique - he had seen 3 slumps before, and all followed the pattern.
Your comment about complete collapse of aviation was just scaremongering. The only way the airline industry could totally collapse is if the world's economy collapses. Then your money is completely worthless, so you may as well have spent it and enjoyed the flying. And World War III would occur, and we can all join the Air Force. Remember the world's economy depends on aviation. They cannot do without it, and the world's stability depends on money, therefore on the economy.