Originally Posted by
skipness1E
Oi! Am 39 next month and travel is my passion. But market analysis is my profession and airline activity is linked with economic health and open borders. And no, there’s no way I am getting on a long haul flight for a long time, and I say that as someone in employment. Unemployment is about to hit heights no one alive has seen. That becomes a cycle of cash strapped people not flying even when the virus is gone which may be never. So any return to flying begs the question as to how you turn a profit in this market? Any disposable income is likely to be new cars or home improvements rather than the pain of the new norm of sterile flying.
My point is you can’t return to profit in that market and there may be no roadmap to doing so. Hence, you either let IAG run out of money, which they will sooner or later, or the state steps in and saves what’s needed to rebuild in the medium term. But in my view, no commercial entity like IAG can wait that long. It’s not that I don’t want BA to be a profitable commercial employer, I do. But I think the return to profitability just isn’t there in any time period that they can survive.
I'm on the other side of the pond (NYC -- Manhattan, to be precise), and I tend to agree with you. My perspective is, perhaps, a bit more grim than yours. I suspect before it goes to a new car or home improvements, disposable income will go toward "fripperies" like replacing completely worn out shoes and winter coats to keep growing children warm.
It's not completely clear to me, but my suspicion is that much of what has kept BA afloat have been business travelers (who, for the most part, travel in paid J ETA :
and F and sometimes (often?) upgrade to F). It is unclear to me at this point how much of that travel is likely to return after the pandemic, given how many people in that class/type of work have been successfully working from home, having Zoom meetings and conferences, etc. One has to wonder whether employers in the not too distant future will revert to the pre-pandemic model and expense of having large groups of people working in offices and traveling to different business locales or whether they will encourage people to work from home, and maintain an ever smaller HQ presence.