U.S. airlines want a $50B bailout. They spent $45B buying back their stock

Re:U.S. airlines want a $50B bailout. They spent $45B buying... by atonse on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @12:48PM (#22804882)

Sure they could've held it. Apple did it for a while. You could invest it and make even more, or invest a bit in not treating your passengers like f*cking cattle and constantly charging millions of fees, maybe?

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Re:U.S. airlines want a $50B bailout. They spent $45B buying... by cactus2093 on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @12:58PM (#22805018)

Passengers are choosing to be treated like cattle, by aggressively bargain hunting for the lowest available sticker price.

You have lots of options to get better service - economy plus, priority boarding, buying food onboard that you no longer get by default. And of course upgrading to business class.

All these things cost more and you could either pay for it by default on every ticket like in the old days, or you can purchase them separately. Consumer demand has overwhelmingly indicated a preference for the latter. Sure the airlines could lower their margins and drive down prices on these things for customers slightly. We'd be in the exact same situation now though without any cash reserves so I don't see how that would have helped.

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Re:U.S. airlines want a $50B bailout. They spent $45B buying... by atonse on Wednesday April 08, 2020 @10:02AM (#22813011)

The $50bn in profits shows exactly exactly that they didn’t cut margins that much, or reduce fees.

Also the prices don’t go down when oil prices do.

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Re:U.S. airlines want a $50B bailout. They spent $45B buying... by clmckinley on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @12:52PM (#22804943)

why isn't stock buy back considered inside trading? Is the purchase somehow firewalled from the company?

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