Let's run this - more than slightly improbable - theory past you all. A mate of yours is a hard-working IT specialist of, say, 30 years old, earning a solid £35K annually. He's a car enthusiast, but he's got wife, kids and mortgage, so his Mondeo is going to have to crack on for a few more years yet. But a Jaguar dealer has persuaded him that the value of Jaguar XKRs is on the rise and that, if he forks out the £63,000 cost of the Jag now, he'll have no problem getting his money back in a few years' time. Honest, guv. Not only that, but the increase in value is so great that he could afford to leave his IT job so that he could enjoy the car 24/7, while living on his savings, or remortgaging the house! Yet, all around him are car adverts suggesting that s/h values of Jag XKRs are, at best, plummetting. And he
still wants to go out and buy that car!
What advice do you give him? Bit of a no-brainer, don't you think?
Take no notice of FTO salesmen! They are trying to keep the cash flow going, nothing more. The brief resurgence of recruiting we saw over the past few months is most definitely on hold until the Iraq situation is clearer. The entire business world is clamping down on any unnecessary expense; that has magnified effects on the airline industry. If it gets no worse than it is now, it will take a year or so to recover the market levels we were enjoying last August - and remember that those levels were 20% down on the year before! It is likely that the current slowdown will even affect the low-cost sector, which (in the UK at least) is now quite mature and more subject to the variations of the overall market.
If we go to war with no UN resolution, expect the economic fallout to be huge as the bunfighting and scapegoating between the different factions begins; trade wars between the US and its naysayers are not out of the question. Aviation will be caught in the middle of this, and the results may not be pretty! In these circumstances. the US is far less likely than it is now to let any of its own, inefficient, carriers go down and may well subsidise the likes of United, American etc, to the detriment of all other carriers into the US. Any reduction in trade between the US and Europe would have a depressing effect on all commerce within the EU. You could go on...... This is, perhaps, a bit of a doomsday scenario, but it serves to illustrate the point that the industry is on a bit of a knife edge at the moment, and it wouldn't take much to make things a lot worse.
In these circumstances, I think you would be wise to wait a while before you commit to anything! Listen to Flypuppy's advice...
Scroggs
Wannabes/Virgin Moderator
[email protected]