yes, because it’s a once in a hundred year world pandemic. People don’t want to get sick and they don’t want their relatives to die. No one wants to fly anywhere and there is no where in the world for them to go. This situation is not going to change until the health crisis is resolved so please move aside for those who actually understand public health.

Interestingly enough there is growing evidence, albeit anecdotal, that the opposite is the case. When epidemiologists and others in healthcare have been asked to advise they have too often said "well you could do x, but the economic cost would be excessive". They have effectively given economic advice which they are not trained to do, and should have been left to the economists so the politicians received a balanced set of opinions. This really is a failure of politicians because in a court of law a judge would tell the medical expert to shut up and restrict opinion to his area of expertise.

We know that for several years epidemiologists have been saying DONT lockdown early and DONT close the borders. Indeed in New Zealand it was the industrialists NOT the healthcare professionals who demanded the politicians locked down and closed early. And in the UK it was only one epidemiologist who effectively forced the lockdown against the mass of 'scientists' who wanted to wait.

The result is clear to see. Those that closed borders and locked down early have eliminated the virus and the economy can recover (albeit not aviation outside the bubble). Those that did too little too late will have ongoing economic disaster and the effect to aviation is far far worse. So blame the epidemiologists and the public health 'experts' but the wrong advice was to prevaricate, not to do too much.

Yes, because cutting global CO2 emissions by less than 0.1% is really going to save the planet. Come on, you could ground every single aircraft flying and it would still only cut global CO2 by about 3%.

For the near future CO2 emissions are not really near the top of the priority list.

They are very much near the top of a priority list. Look at the proposed restrictions being put on the Air France and KLM loan agreements from their respective country.

Time to put part time work for all pilots and cabin crew in return for job protection formally on the table ? Lufthansa have. At least then all would see how genuine BA protestations are.

This is naked self-interest from a government which owns the SNCF railway and it's high speed TGVs, which whatever their attributes have lost a lot of money for the government, which in the normal way has been just written off. The overmanning and regular strikes leading to much of the loss will be recognised as having a parallel with Air France. SNCF will surely have seized their chance with the government.

Although a TGV train may run from Paris to Nice (by no means all the way on special fast lines) the service is complementary rather than a direct equal. The air services start from notably different places that just happen to be called "Paris", though are well away from it, and are generally cheaper. They don't have all that lengthy infrastructure expenditure to recover, the air is free, and parking at the airport is far easier than in central Paris. And unlike Orly I certainly wouldn't send any woman employee business traveller to go through Gare de Lyon late in the evening. Though it's not quite as bad as Gare du Nord :(

Watch out for these self-centred arguments coming to the UK.

Or understand what panic can do to the world economy!

The effects of the cure now getting worse than the disease IMO. Cancer diagnosis down 70%, possible causal deaths of this, 60,000.
Calls to domestic abuse helplines up 49%, domestic murders increased 3 fold.
Prof Nutjob Ferguson predicted 200 million deaths from bird flu in 2005, there were a few hundred only, worldwide. Oh yes our leading SAGE boffin!

A&E depts quieter than ever because people too afraid to get treatment in case they catch something which maybe no worse than flu. Flu, that we don’t even routinely test for, or attribute as possible cause of death!

Fiasco 🤬

There will be lots of finger pointing when all of this is over. There will be the usual public inquiry, (with lawyers making lots of money of course) but as is usual in public life, "lessons will be learned". Nobody will end up accountable and dangling by their neck at the end of a rope. The so called "experts" who are all so knowledgeable that they rarely agree with each other will quietly slink back to their safe jobs in academic institutions. The government will align behind Boris, who will do his best bluff and bluster act of "piffle....balderdash....quod erat demonstrandum.... phwaaaahhhh!!"
The mantra will be that they all "did their best" under the circumstances. The fact it wasn't good enough won't matter, it never does for any of the "institutional ilk". Not one of them will lose their livelihood.

Private Jet: Summed up perfectly! My father always wanted me to be a lawyer!

Agree with a lot of your post apart from that..

I think many of the scientists contributing to SAGE or contributing advice by other means are already starting to sense that they will be the ones held to blame (a.k.a. "thrown under the bus") if there ever is an investigation into all this.

The politicians get out will be "I was only obeying the scientists' advice"

Are IAG teeing up Vueling to operate the LGW slots?

No he didn't! I presume you are just taking that from the spectator 'list of questions that he should be asked', but it doesn't hold up to even a passing examination. If you find the comments that are referred to, you can see that they were made in response to a question about a hypothetical scenario proposed by the WHO under which H5N1 mutated to allow efficient human to human transmission, and was very clearly a back-of the envelope comparison to Spanish flu rather than a scientific 'prediction'. A politician would never make the mistake of giving a direct answer to a question like that! Can you blame them when people are so uncritical of 'facts' that they read in the news?

Not according to Mahoney in either of the Teams Meetings. However his lips were moving..

So, am I right in thinking that the uk govt £300m was in the iag piggy bang before señor sent out the email where he said there was no government money, as an excuse to make cuts?

Wrong thread but I'll follow the crowed...

I come from the future. Most of us have eventually caught COVID-19. For me and most people I know, it was as bad as the worst case of flu I ever had but I survived. We destroyed our economies, and faith in politics, science and medicine. Oh and the third world eventually caught up with death rates from Western countries. No scrap that, they smashed all other records. We finally accepted immunity was the only cure and losing 5% of (mainly over 60s) was worth it after all.

All the best

Senor Cruz: “It is now clear that we will not get back to 2019 flying until 2023 at the earliest”

It’s clear, is it? Could I have Fridays Euromillions winning numbers whilst you have your crystal ball available, Alex? The cold, hard truth is you don’t have the foggiest right now and it’s all guesswork. Just look how quickly the London Underground bounced back after 7/7 despite the numerous predictions I remember hearing at the time that hardly anyone would use it anymore.

Exactly what I thought! Was gonna ask him if I could borrow his crystal ball for a while. Also curious that he states they are looking at early fleet retirements when I could swear someone told us we are keeping all fleets just a few days ago 🤔

haha !! That made me laugh !! Not at the post , the first part

for those who missed it

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/briti...072328319.html