No Government help

[Donuts2001]

Although the government have appeared to help UK airlines with insurance costs for war risks, they immediatley issued a 30 day cancellation notice meaning that UK airlines have 30 days to sort out their insurance issues or there will be fleets of aircraft grounded.

Anyone heard anything about this? It is really serious.

[Horatio]

Donuts,

The UK Government agreed to provide the war risk cover for 30 days free of charge, thereafter they would charge the airlines a 'commercial rate'. No change in the deal at all; get your facts right.

The airlines knew this, even if you didn't ;)

[crewrest]

Any sign of any other government help, such as Italy helping Alitalia (and Switzerland not helping Swiss Air)

The US carriers got direct Government handouts, anyone know how the lobbying to the EU is going to help the Euro carriers?

I assume the political departments of BA/VS(BM?) are pushing for it.

[Notso Fantastic]

Crewrest, 'official' Government support for industry is banned under EEC legislation. Nobody wants to see all airlines grounded in Europe. What you can bet is whatever the problems in a month, a 'solution' (read 'muck-around', 'compromise') will be found by EEC politicians who after all have gallons of our money to spray around. Now whether they will be happy to spray taxpayers money at airlines with overpaid top management......!

[crewrest]

Further to my last:

The BBC Business section: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1552000/1552339.stm has the following:

Will European airlines be at a disadvantage if their US rivals receive financial aid?

IATA says the European companies would be at a "tremendous disadvantage" if they receive no assistance to deal with the crisis.

Should the US airlines win substantial financial backing from Congress, the European Commission would be under enormous pressure from the industry and national governments to help its own airlines.

"Not to react would be irrational on their part," says IATA's Mr Gaillard.

"They would have on their conscience the demise of the European airline industry and thousands of lay-offs."

.What kind of financial aid would the European airlines receive?

The US airlines are asking for a $24bn bail-out, but this has not yet been agreed to by Congress.

The aid is expected to take the form of direct cash, guaranteed loans and possibly tax cuts.

In Europe, the structure of any package would probably be adapted because the airlines are not as cash-strapped.

For example, they may receive cash and loans, but not tax relief necessarily.

The industry is also expecting regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to relax restrictive rules on future mergers as a result of the crisis.

Most analysts believe that the industry is too fragmented and needs to consolidate so that players can share costs and build greater economies of scale.

At the moment regulations provide a disincentive because merger partners are often forced to give up existing traffic rights