If 2021 doest happen, will the airlines fold?

[Tweety1]

Originally Posted by YorkshireT

I think I’ll team up with a few Dibbers and get this going for a trip if all the airlines are bust.

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We would fill the plane

[Gelatoni]

Originally Posted by MarkUK

I take no pleasure in saying this but I fully expect Virgin to go bust in the next 6 months once the realisation sets in that they won’t be flying again until late 21, early 22

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I'm worried about this too. We won't be flying for the foreseeable and I just don't know how viable Virgin and other airlines will be. Concerned that we won't be able to claim our money back via credit card since there's been so many amendments.

I really hope the government injects some cash into the airlines, or have they decided it"s just not a viable industry anymore post-Covid? 😢

[cornishfrogboy]

Originally Posted by Gelatoni

I'm worried about this too. We won't be flying for the foreseeable and I just don't know how viable Virgin and other airlines will be. Concerned that we won't be able to claim our money back via credit card since there's been so many amendments.

I really hope the government injects some cash into the airlines, or have they decided it"s just not a viable industry anymore post-Covid? 😢

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Without being a doomsayer, Virgin were barely viable before Covid, having operated at a fair loss for each of the previous 5 years. Delta own 49% of it and they have made it clear that they cannot/will not help it out.. (possibly due to the terms of their own US government bail out). Their solvency or otherwise may be why the U.K. government also turned their back on them.

Virgin were asking for 500m in April in order to keep going through the Summer and eventually achieved this with difficulty in late August. At that time, they surely did not think that they would have to survive without revenue, certainly past Easter and probably past the Summer of 2021?

If they go under, it will be a short term tragedy for U.K. Atlantic travel, particularly into Florida. Whilst I rarely use them into Florida as they never seem competitive, they have given me extremely competitive flights into other parts of the States, where they have actually been the best deal.. I.e the cheapest at coach class.

For this year (2021 California, Arizona, Nevada), I never even considered them, even though they both fly into SFO and out of LAS. We only looked at BA and American for 3 reasons..
1. I do multi city DIY and lost flights through Company failure would cause a pretty much total rebook or cancellation. That can be time consuming.
2. Their refund policy in 2020 absolutely stank, was unlawful and has put me off. BA and American both refunded me in less than a fortnight for both March and August cancellations.
3. I have no confidence in their surviving until Summer without a further capital injection and struggle to see how they will get it with few assets, large overheads, their LHR slots in hock and much/ most of their future fleet leased rather than owned. Perhaps some vultures will pick over the dead carcass.

I hope that they survive. Thousands of good people (A few of whom I know) stand to be unemployed. We saw on the Manchester- Orlando route what happens when one airline holds a monopoly. Prices rise as airlines satisfy their shareholders by generating dividends by maximising income.
They are of similar fleet size to Monarch and smaller than Thomas Cook.. we saw what happened to them and that was before Covid had its disastrous effect.

The airline industry is presently in a precarious short term mess. The people I really feel for are those who may lose their jobs and even more so, youngsters who have borrowed 100k plus in loans in order to obtain Pilot licensing and are now sitting watching, paying interest and looking at quite literally thousands of Aircraft sat in the Mojave and elsewhere that in the main, will never fly again. They are also going to have to compete for work against thousands of currently unemployed, but vastly experienced Pilots for jobs where supply will vastly outweigh demand and wages may become seriously depressed.