mike1968

<edit -all noted flights in this example were on UA in my flight history notes; good portion of $ amounts noted at present are spend/stranded costs on UA tickets; discussion of MP status on UA and in general...rather pertinent to topic of UA financial health going forward in a topic on UA financial results--sorry to say but Covid is a trigger that will prove a temporary setback or full blown systemic shock to UA..not sure how this is assumed to be missing some point related to UA as UA 1MM that's flown, well a lot of miles on UA and a vested interest to see them survive this...end edit>

i'll go out on a limb here and say this is going to be the clear gold medal winner and a new World Record for an unprecedented external shock that will make this #1 by end of next week. Gulf War 1, I was on a trip to Australia and flew all that spring; 9/11 I was on a 727 to LGA with everyone on the right side of the plane solemnly staring at the still smoldering crater on approach within 2 weeks (~Sep 20) and flew all that fall including overseas; 2008 travel budgets were reduced, but business carried on.

On this one, 100s of big name companies are doing the "no corporate travel allowed without leadership approval" until April 1...and that's a rolling date where I work. Leisure travel and being quarantinted in a hotel, ship or plane (whether over-reaction or not) absolutely no way. Based on $ pricey tickets for international travel and less pricey non refundable domestic ones...my small team has refunded $30k in C travel in past 2 weeks and is sitting on $20k in non refundable ticket credits. I have no idea how the accounting works on that, but even if this thing is hyberbole,,,once the complete travel ban is lifted where I work, we'll be working through Q1 sunk cost tickets well into Q2 or Q3. Can't image that forward bookings to Europe look very good right now...and if we have an Italy situation going on in N. Cal right now, there goes the SFO hub.

long story to say, all those previous events pale in comparison to this as I've never seen a mass of companies ban travel outright or make it super difficult to travel without risk department approval. SARS crisis--I was still on a plane weekly...now grounded and definitely in no mood to go somewhere fun to find out I'm quarantined in a hotel (Canary Island luxury resort) or god forbid an airplane (stuck in UA882 747 F at ORD for 2.5 hours after returning NRT during SARS b/c Y pax was very ill...not something I want to repeat and that was being comfortable in F).

I forget if it was 9/11 or something else, but I definitely see a current status roll-forward into 2021 if this thing doesn't turn out to be overblown in a month. Won't prognosticate, but toss in a cancelled Olympics, MLB baseball season, and summer travel season will be ruined and then we all may be talking about airline russian roullette mid summer to see who managed to stash away enough cash to survive, let alone limp into 2021. I know that's a bit hyberbolic, but I've never seen a point where companies are saying "no travel" and the massive trade shows and tech conferences for the late winter/spring season are cancelled en-masse. MWC alone was 100,000 people (~80,000+ with plane tickets) who thankfully didn't [have to] get together in a giant convention center this week as this thing blows up in Italy and other parts of Europe.

And even if overblown, this is just another topic that will have companies outdoing themselves to see who can be more "eco-friendly" in the coming weeks and vuture by using tele-presence and video-conference vs putting people on airplanes which is probably the other shoe that will drop if this thing prolongs more than the average sr. executive's attention span.