Whiskery:
Industry analysts are almost always senior management of airlines OR Aviation Financial analysts from people like Goldman Sachs, Smith Barney, Credit Suisse First Boston etc.
In the case of the airlines they quite often are not commenting on their airline but another.
There are, as you can image, a host of resaons why they can't go on record and we must then balance one comment with others and come up with what we believe to be a middle ground position.
Re Peter Harbison: Most in the industry from a management and financial perspective rank him very highly.
Also I never thought Sir Peter was an expert on airlines...trucking maybe??
Best GT