Yeah! The fantastic speed with which the meaningful AIDS treatment and vaccine were developed makes me optimistic too!

When I meant “ most of us” I am referring to those who have been treated in a disgraceful manner by many of the major airlines around the world who in addition to withholding refunds are also now pleading for tax payers money to keep them going. Of course many will go for the cheapest option in the future and good luck to them and the airlines who provide this excellent service. My point is look after your passengers now and they will remain loyal to you in the future. It makes good business sense.

while you might be thinking that way (and I admire that), I do think you think too highly of people in general.
Sure most will say never to fly Z again when issued a voucher, but in a years time they are Z is slightly cheaper than X and there they go, booking with Z...

There is a reason most, if not all, airlines were on a downward slope regarding service, perks and extra's. It's all about the money and the ones who choose more with past experience in mind (like you) don't generate enough of it.

Hopefully I am wrong, though..

The reality is "most of us" will be a significantly smaller number for a few years to come.

Of the airlines that deserve to succeed I would like to single out Finnair for their excellent customer service and efficient refunding of my money. I will definitely be using them again!

I guess that depends on where you are in the age distribution. A lot of inheriting is taking place, and a lot of houses are handed down. Which gives quite a few people a warm windfall far sooner than expected...

Will it be enough to stimulate enough demand? Who knows, but those that can offer the cheapest prices will be in the best position for those that do not inherit anything after all. Those offering premium travel will most probably be hit the hardest, as both companies and individuals will most likely cut back a bit on that nice but pricey business class seat. We have seen that during the financial crisis, companies did cut back on international business bookings a lot and it took quite a few years for it to come back, and that was, after all, a pretty small crisis.

When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and most of the whole world financial system would have followed into the abyss but for the intervention of central banks and government? I know memory has the ability to be somewhat blunted with time but that was as far from “a pretty small crisis” as you can get.

(I agree though that it has the potential to be small in comparison to this but not in its own terms)

I'm currently booked with First choice /Tui

Being trying to contact them for 3 weeks but nobody has yet to answer the phone ( my phone battery only lasts for 2 hours)

I was happy to keep my booking and roll it over to next year but lack of information and communication wants me now to get my money back.

I know it's tough at the moment but keeping your customers in the current situation is key to staying in business.

Well I do not know which newspapers you read , but mine ( le Monde, Guardian , WSJ , NYT, etc.) all give a different picture . Even if you are 85 here is a big difference between dying of a stoke and spending 3 weeks in a ventilator to start with . That said the age bracket people ending up in hospital is much wider than only older people . From what I hear if you come out alive of the ventilator you lungs are so damaged that you cannot do much anymore. If you were correct the mass graves in NYC of the 16 pages obituaries in the Local Italians newspapers where it used to be 1 or 2 would all be fake news then ?
..

BA & Easy in particular have been really shocking in offering refunds. In fact, has anyone been refunded, in cash, within 1 week as required BY EU LAW?

I called BA on Tuesday 14 April to cancel a flight on 19 April. Held for less than 20 minutes. Avios returned within 24 hours and money back on my card by yesterday (Friday).

No complaints but I have been sitting on the refund call and hoping that most of the expected surge had passed. Did try about a week earlier but constantly cut off due volume of calls.

(not a regular poster as you can see but posted for balance)

That could cripple EU airlines compared to the US, and other, competitors.

https://www.politico.eu/article/airl...irus-bailouts/

Airlines brace for climate strings attached to coronavirus bailouts

To come back to the initial question, just check the cash amount of the airlines plus their business model.
Below 4 months without the possibility to reform the airline and without any state participation, it's done.
My two cents.

Not to worry it will all even out in the end. The state will pick winning airlines on the basis of maximizing short term political gain. Those chosen few will with the inevitable bean counter driven mentality of their executives, inflate airfares in order to goose this quarters returns and their bonuses which will open space for nimble new entrants who will undercut them but over expand on the basis of irrational exuberance that this time it is different; until it all comes crashing down the when the next world wide bad thing happens....

We have seen this movie before.

I have not personally seen detailed financial updates from many companies yet but easyJet released this on Thursday:

“We estimate that our operating costs burn is in the region of £30-40 million per week, whilst the fleet is grounded. This compares to circa £125 million when flying a full schedule.”

“Upon closure of all these funding initiatives, we expect to have generated total additional liquidity of c.£1.85-£1.95bn leading to a notional cash balance of circa £3.3bn.”

“We have run scenario analysis assuming that our fleet remains fully grounded for 3 months, 6 months and 9 months,”

“This analysis has shown that we have sufficient cash reserves to remain liquid across a number of scenarios:

o During a 3-month grounding easyJet would use around £1.2bn in cash;

o During a 6-month grounding we would use around £2.2bn in cash;

o During a 9-month grounding we would use around £3.0bn in cash.”

Full report here:

Trading Update for Six Months ending 31 March 2020


CP

Good planning , cash reserves and transparency . EZY definitively will be one that still will be there in 6 months time ..( which by now has become October )

Good on EZY to lay out the costs and what preparations they have made. If the other airlines were as transparent then that would go a long way to giving confidence to their staff.

Interesting and transparent update for sure, especially having started a sale/leaseback with lessors on 50% of the fleet - BUT what happens to the £3 billion cash burn when the return to flying might only utilise 10% of the fleet on 10% of the routes, growing at a tempered rate until all borders re-open and public confidence returns - the fact remains, getting bums on seats is not going to be immediate for 126/189 capacity aircraft so how long can they continue to operate with a less than 50% load factor... How do they last the next 24 months before the fleet can even begin to get anywhere close to load factors they are used to?

They sold and leased back 20% of the fleet. Before this crisis 70% of the fleet was owned, now it's "only" 50%.

market for 1/3 occupation?
 

Personally my wife and I would be happy to take 1/3 our normal number of intercontinental flights and pay 3x the price of a ticket, if social distancing etc., etc., etc. would be rigorously adhered to on those flights and at the airports. Flight revenue for the airline would be roughly the same.
I wonder whether there would be a market for that: same number of flights, 1/3 occupation, triple price; 1/3 the number of passengers per day.
At present there is an all or nothing situation - some thinking should go towards changing the business.

Isn't that called "Business Class"? People have tried running business-class-only flights. It didn't work.

It is not comfort that would be offered but safety. Quite a different product I would think.

There will always be an alternative, because the vast majority of people are happy to take the minuscule risk of flying economy class rather than pay 3 times the price for a business class seat.

I'm intrigued. How will you get to/from the airport and what will you actually do at the destination? You cannot control every single person you will come in contact with.

All seems rather pointless.

That’s not the question here. If it was, easyJet and all other European airlines would have to throw in the towel now without even trying to save the business. Is that what you are suggesting?

The £3bn are various types of credits that are paid back on commercial terms. I thought that was clear or? We have already seen that creditors (aircraft lessors for example) have been flexible with payback terms for companies with healthy finances pre-corona, not so for companies where creditors have had doubts in future of companies.

Also, nothing is indicating that European airlines will be grounded for 9 months and everything is indicating that they will be completely grounded for about 2-3 months. From there ops are likely to start up in steps around Europe with some countries / routes opening up earlier than other. That leaves at least £1.5bn in reserves, or about £200m per month, from start of ops to support the company through the coming 6-8 months.

CP

It's certainly not about throwing the towel in - it is about the ability to repay the £600 million it has drawn down due for repayment in March 2021 (which will come round very quickly) as required by HMG as part of the credit paper - If you have to dip further into other credit revolver facilities having leveraged yourself before the market recovers to a point of viability then you start to run out of runway very quickly.

Of all the airlines EZY is by far the most viable, along with the Green machine, however, my point being is that absolutely no-one is talking about recovery planning financial forecasts - they are just saying we can last this long based us on having this much money in the bank or that can be drawn upon.

Lasting any amount of time is one thing but saying - when we eventually get airborne again in 'x' months, we expect to utilise 'x' amount of the fleet at 'x' load factor over 'x' amount of time increasing at an average rate of 'x' per quarter - this will then at least demonstrate they have got a handle on reality and confidence that it has been financially modelled, thought about and that the staff will feel confident - this SHOULD be done so that the staff at least know there is a long term future and they are not going to be hung out to dry if the situation didn't go as the board predicted.

Thinking there is going to be some magic snap back to November 2019 normality is not happening anytime soon. We are all desperate for it to and I doubt there is a single person that doesn't want it to happen lightning-quick, but it shouldn't stop anyone being realistic and modelling what a re-start looks like

What I am worried about is that we see the imposition of aviation specific health care theater just like the current joke of airport security which is really just security theater; that is measures designed to make people feel better but don't actually do much to make travel safer.

Society seems to be getting worse and worse at making rational risk-reward decisions. Half filling airliners means air travel will only be available if you are rich, and IMO is policy madness disadvantaging whole segments of the population for virtually no real gain.

The bottom line is that air travel, especially international air travel is the primary means contagious diseases like the Corona virus spreads, so what are the procedures to put in place to make sure people who are sick don't get on airplanes ?

Jetscream 32, that would be great information but nobody, and I mean NOBODY, knows what and when those pax numbers are going to be.

So here they are, all airlines not just easyJet, trying to survive these next months and then deal with next hurdle. I guess the taxpayers will want their money back so payback terms of government COVID19 loan facilities will be renegotiated if needed. If not, we’ll potentially see quite a few companies filing for bankruptcy and defaulting on government loans which means money is gone. In easyJet’s case, and likely all other financially viable companies, I presume they’ll go to the commercial market for loan swap deal to get out of government loans as soon as it is possible.

An operational point to remember is also that costs will only really rise beyond reported £120m / month if and when the fleet gets activated and crew called in from the various furlough schemes. In other words, aircraft and crew will only get activated when there is a business case for that to happen. I think business will get going in some bases and on some routes pretty quickly, but take much longer time elsewhere. For employees this means that some will stay on furlough pay for a much longer time than other will.

CP

Absolutely agree with everything you say - I was talking about financial modelling only to at least understand if you go from 120 to 150 to 190 burn rate per month you know how long you’ve got with the remaining cash you have whilst starting to incur more operating costs - pray for continued free oil 🤣

Upon hearing Prof Whitty tonight and hearing from a govt colleague in Spain there seems very slim to nil capability for anything to restart other than in low capacity form in 2020...

I thought the same when I heard him - if social distancing continues to be mandated for the rest of the year as he suggests then I dont see how any passenger airline can restart services on a commercial basis in 2020.

Perhaps the title of the thread should be changed to 'Who will survive this and be here in 18 months?' because this year is going to pretty much cease to exist in aviation terms.

Indigo Airlines have decided to release full salary to staff and not effect the 15% cut as they intimated earlier. They have also not furloughed anyone till date. Some silver lining in otherwise deep dark clouds

What Iam hearing through my pos in the union, and talking to different unions and management's, it's clear load factors will not be back to 'normal' for at least the end of the year. Every airline has unique financial aspects but the focus will be on cost cutting through fuel hedging(the current fuel price is a gift that wont last), labor cost, get rid of certain overhead and negotiating leases. It's clear that labor cost will have to be substantially cut at least for the length of which revenues are heavily impacted and employees will hopefully fight to keep everybody employed at lower wages instead of having lower seniority laid off trying to protect the current wages. I remember where pilots were facing this choice a few years ago and chose to have a lot of their colleagues laid off in order to protect their pay( it was more complicated but beyond the scope here).
I really hope unions will focus on keeping current employees employed through temporary benefit cuts which should be recouped when things are better again.

How are you going to get the passengers from the terminal to the aircraft if it is parked on a remote stand. You cannot stand on a crowded bus with your face in someone's armpit? The days of 25 minute turnarounds are over with social distancing and the cabin will need a deep clean down route. MOL says 66.6% (middle seat empty) load factor will not pay.

How about keeping the mid and upper management at lower pay and zero bonuses

How about getting rid of the middle management?

https://www.aerotime.aero/clement.ch...-save-alitalia

Not only...but...as well.

Drive to the airport. Rent a car at the other end. Airports and airport facilities must have taken measures ofcourse to ensure distancing. Not all that complicated it seems to me.

Not all airports apparently . a friend sent me some photos from Twitter of a full A320 from CDG to MRS yesterday , no masks , no airport control either on departure or arrival ,queuing, business as before it seems .for some :rolleyes:..
here : Wizzair is flying East European migrant workers to Aspargus flieds in the Netherlands in big numbers ..same apparently .

That's just laughable. If they haven't been able to run the business with profits during years when competitors booked billions in profits then why would they now?? There is zero chance of current situation benefiting Alitalia and it will not "kick off in the same position as other airlines once the market recovers.”. I hope for the sake of all the employees in Alitalia that the company will survive, but it will only ever survive on continued life support from the government.

CP

@Atc watcher,
Do you remember when They introduced ban for liquid more than 100ml ?? And, all of sudden, after passing security check, there were ( and still there) wending automat selling water 0,5 l for just 2$. Some evil voices spoke that owner of all these "machines" is son of high level politician.
Expect the same, today. Why?
Because son must work something. Either in dutch greenhouses or sell sometning ( masks, gloves etc) to happy passengers.
😀😊