If those numbers come up I'll host a Wannabes ball with free champagne..

Possibly a bit premature but:
We are into the season of banks giving trading updates. Seems most of the dirty washing is out on display, stock markets have reacted favourably. The Banks hearlded the start of the downturn, now they have come clean, maybe they will start in a few months to trust each other again and pull down the LIBOR premium. Eventually they will be able to offer more affordable loans to first time buyers.
Don't get me wrong the rest of the economy has some way to go to bottom out. Unemployment will continue to rise and house prices will carry on down.

BUT We could be seeing the end of the beginning of the downturn.

House prices will bottom out say May 2009 and stay static through to mid 2010. Unemployment similar. As seems to be common knowledge Airlines are last to recover say 2011 and we may well be able to find gainful employment.
Probably be helped by the spending on the Olympics, and a election with a change of Govt. or at least PM :} and things will be on the up.


Don't get into debt and it all looks rosey :):):)


Fran

Seems like only 6 months ago the $100 barrel of oil made the front page of the times (hang on a minute it was just 6 months ago............)

One of the more relevant points that Lafyar made was that its the media and peoples perception of recession that will fuel a downturn, not whats written on here. A small decrease in oil price when it has risen nearly 50% in 6 months I feel is not going to help matters much its a bit like having to stick your hand in water at 90 deg as opposed to Boiling - its still gonna hurt!

Lead in times for expansion and aircraft ordering are many years in the making, how can strategy planners in the aviation industry account for what is happening in 6 months (see above) never mind in 2015 which is when your 787 would pitch up if you ordered it today........

People mock Ryanair management for not hedging their fuel, on the day that the $100 barrel of oil made it to the front page, more intelligent people than me would have thoght it suicidal to hedge fuel at $110......... This climate is catching out some serious players - recruitment for wannabees is not going to be high on the agenda.

Oil Price Fall >10%
 

WWW

Those figures are acual - Oil dropped now by 11% !

Good News
 

Oil Drops
BBC NEWS | Business | Oil recovers after four-day slump

FTSE Rise
BBC NEWS | Business | Market Data | Stock Markets | FTSE 100

Mortgage Dropped twice
BBC NEWS | Business | Nationwide to cut mortgage rates

Iran Problem Progress
BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Iran hopeful about US 'approach'

Growth Better says IMF
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/751176


WWW I demand your bottle of Dom Pérignon !!!!

I would look at volatility indices to see if the FTSE is really rising, or the oil price abating. I believe VIX is still massive, so any daily rise can mean little on a trend basis, and simply that sentiment is hugely volatile from day to day.

the only way to keep strong economy with rising fuel price is to increase energy efficiency, thats why US was affected more than Europe as they were slow to adopt various energy saving schemes.

question is, what would be the next step by the goverment to further improve energy efficiency? :)

Agreed

GSPOTS, that was a pretty low thing to do by airing someone's PM in the public domain, what a snake :=

RexBanner refering to an earlier post (#47) of yours regarding who's going to fly all these new aircraft etc, I'd say the current crews are. Alot of new aircraft orders now are for fleet replacement programs to dispense of "old, dirty & fuel inefficient airframes" rather than for massive expansion.

Just my opinion :)

D777

To correct your vocabulary, you actually posticipated them.

House pricing crashed long before you posted anything about it on this website and the housing market still survived although you were throwing totally apocalyptic prognoses.

You are a moderator, so you can make as many accounts on this website as you wish. Honestly, I don't see why anyone should endorse any of your unbacked comments and I have reasons to believe you may be endorsing yourself through numerous accounts.

You got out of shares and into oil and gold?
You don't think you can make any money by betting 1000 pound notes do you? Can an airline pilot afford to bet tenth of thousands of pounds into commodities?
I doubt it very much.

The minimum you had to invest into commodities as a private person to make any worthwile profit on oil is 100 000 pounds over 2 years. If you are really good you would have made 25 000 pounds. But that means that you would have made more percentage-wise than investment banks like ING.
It would be impossible and insane for an airline captain to even try to invest 50 000£ and make any profit out of it.
There's no place for the little man in commodities trading. Only huge banks, investment funds and professional private investors with very deep pockets but no family life could do that.

The only way I see you could have invested your efforts into rising oil prices is to get onto one of these online trading platforms where you bet 1000 bucks at a time.
Keyword: time.
As an airline pilot, how many available time do you have to even sit on a computer during market hours just to try to make 20 bucks or loose 100.
Is that what you do? Online trading is a matter of luck. You can't win. Only the guy that manages the online service and cashes on the spreads can win.

Now, before you post any further non-sense, why don't you find the guts to predict what is going to happen in 2010? or 2011?
What about giving some inside information of the airline you fly for instead of posting rumours that OTHER European airlines will go down?
Are you flying empty?
What's the average load factor of your airline compared to last year?
What does the increase of capacity at your airline look like?
How many are they (planning on) hiring?

Show some legacy as moderator of "professional pilot rumour network", through willingness to share real insider information.

That's a better way to earn the respect of your audience.

I feel that is too pesimistic, what we have at the moment are a load of chancers making rediculous offers purely on the back of media stories. The banks cannot afford to keep borrowers at bay. The criteria for loans and mortgages will be relaxed soon, the fuss will be over around the end of the year. I might agree that house price mania maybe subdued for some time to come, but that is probably a good thing.

I get the feeling that most people and organisations generally do not feel any more insecure than they did a year ago. For example, the IT consultancy that I left for aviation now is expanding with nobody on the bench, 2005 was the last time it was so good for them. I'm, erm, pretty sure I wasn't causing that much damage.

As a side note, I really don't think oil and house prices are as relevant to the economy as some understandably believe. One cannot take individual specific commodities and apply their state to the state of the economy as a whole. I think the economy is now much more robust than it is generally given credit for, this is probably because there are now more powerful players in the world and the US and is increasingly a peer rather than a driver. Saying that, a slowdown will probably help rather than hinder in the medium to long term.

Hear hear! G Spot's Lost behaviour in making a PM public business shows appalling judgement and a distinct lack of breeding. What an oik!

“This is the greatest crisis in aviation’s history; bigger than the Gulf wars, the attacks of September 11, 2001, severe acute respiratory syndrome and past oil shocks.”

Quote Tim Clark, President of Emirates. (Talking about current oil price crisis)

Tim Clarke is CEO of one of a few airlines that's still paying oil at 30$ a gallon. They're buying Jet A straight from the factory.

Emirates ordered all those huge airplanes because they were anticipating this energy crisis... potential big failures in the U.S. and a slowdown in Europe for legacy airlines.

The problem with Europe is that legacy airlines can rely on only 1 market: longhaul. The money-makers are longhaul to Asia, Africa, South America and during good times North America.

Why are they losing money on shorthaul?
Because Easyjet, Ryanair, Wizzair and other LCC are taking most intra-European leisure pax for themselves.

So why do these airlines still fly shorthaul routes?
Because they need to feed their profitable longhaul routes.

That's why the European legacy airlines are on a merging frenzy.
They try to reduce and even compliment each partners on all longhaul routes.

Emirates is going to compete very hard against European airlines on routes to Asia and some routes to Africa maybe even direct routes to South America and north America from Dubai. They can push prices as low as they want as they have control of their fuel prices, which is their main strength.

So yes, Emirates hopes that this crisis turns out to be as big as it wishes it to be.

Oil prices are a sideshow to the main event that will cripple many airlines and see Wannabes on the dole. The main event is a Recession. The oil spike is but a factor in this.

It is relevant to consider the spike but it won't matter soon how cheap the tickets are or what the kerosene in the wings cost.

Welcome to 1990.

WWW

Just to pour a little petrol onto the fire. Revenue that government receives will shrink, and its spending will increase. That means even less for us, as an increase in direct taxation is an inevitability. The main losses to Gordon will be less revenue from capital gains tax, stamp duty, VAT, and death duties. Probably a few other things to throw in. At the same time, government will have to fork out more for tax credit, more for unemployment benefit, more for NHS, two expensive wars (a third pending). So tax will be going up, play around with the tax codes and chop a few allowances. By the time Gordons finished, and chuck in an inflation rate of 10% or more, the credit crunch wont matter, as no one will want a loan, unless of course its for a loaf of bread.

Happy days are ahead :(

So get out of the UK then. This country's been going down the tubes for some time now. Plenty opportunities elsewhere.

Mike, I think the point is that the situation is not unique to the UK.

I agree, however, I say again - there are plenty opportunities elsewhere, assuming people are willing to upsticks and relocate. The aviation world stretches a lot further than just the UK and US

I doubt the grass would be anymore greener elsewhere, even the current oasis of the Arabian desert they'll be tightening their belts. After all the like of Emirates, Qatar Airways, Gulf Air, etc are dependent on people outside of the middle east travelling thus a recession elsewhere will impact the Mid-East consequently stemming and reducing demand. This still leaves the ever flexible wannabe little choice to seek employment there. I would reiterate the same scenario for Asia a global slowdown is a global one and some will avoid the rising waters longer than others but I feel it'll eventually submerge all sooner or later.

In fact things appear so bleak that I am starting to redefine wannabes and not just recent graduates but also recent hires with a few houndreds hours on type under their belt, captains they most certainly are not and thus will be in the same muddle pool as the newbies. Awful I know but I just can't see how we're going to get out of this anytime soon. Therefore to up sticks and move elsehwhere would a stay of execution but the costs of relocating compared to the brief period of employment would reset you back to square one or even a few steps beyond that too.

Darling must be reading my posts

BBC NEWS | The Reporters | Robert Peston