Bankruptcy
British Airways, which is a result of a fusion between BA and BEA has been rescued from bankruptcy almost as many times as myself, thanks to a good bank manager. The excuse always was that BOAC was forced to fly the Comet, Britannia and the Concorde and BEA the Tridents and BAC111's, all of which were spectacular, in that the VC10 and Concorde looked great, but lost money, even when parked, and the others looked rotten and lost money anyway. In each case the Government 'compensated' the airlines for being the sales promoters of British designed aircraft. During the same period Aer Lingus got approximately 200 million pounds subsidy,in total, some of which was to compensate it for having to cede Gatwick airport rights and Liverpool airport rights to Ryanair, to keep the latter airline from collapse. This amount was about the same as the annual subvention for airlines like Sabena and Alitalia. Iberia was a flying subsidy for some years and never made it's operating costs, let alone profit.