I'm 32, so a little too young and naive to remember the real effects of boom and bust in the 80's and 90's. How did this affect BA at the time? I'm guessing there was probably a lot more government subsidy for "flag carriers" kicking around at the time that would have cushioned the blow?

I'd predict business travel to plummet if a global recession did really kick off, along with leisure travel as people felt less comfortable putting holidays on credit.

Could we expect to see a dramatic scaling back of the route network, and perhaps more sell-offs of the peripheral (sp?) operations (e.g. the domestic network and the LCY ops)?

(From a selfish point of view - is this the time to spend miles whilst there's a network to spend them on???)