Re:U.S. airlines want a $50B bailout. They spent $45B buying...
by ff317 on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @12:56PM
(#22804997)
Not to mention the airline industry in particular routinely has adverse events that affect it. Just to run down a list of random things airline execs should be considering as "normal" risks they need to plan some buffer for, all of which have caused significantly impactful events on a regular basis for the industry, even to the point of causing some airlines to go bankrupt and/or be bought out by competitors over time:
* Government regulation impacts
* Union strikes
* Aircraft groundings due to faulty (or less-long-lived than anticipated) parts
* Ticket search companies undercutting their profits
* Oil (and thus fuel, one of their main costs) price surges
* Wars and conflicts that decrease travel demand or cause large unsafe-to-fly zones over the world.
* Volcano eruptions that fill regions of the globe's sky with engine-killing volcanic dust.
* Terrorism (the reduction in passenger demand in the wake, groundings while implementing new safeguards, related lawsuits in the aftermath, etc)
* Now-obviously: Pandemics (but even smaller epidemics have shown effects several times in the past couple of decades!)
* Government regulation impacts
* Union strikes
* Aircraft groundings due to faulty (or less-long-lived than anticipated) parts
* Ticket search companies undercutting their profits
* Oil (and thus fuel, one of their main costs) price surges
* Wars and conflicts that decrease travel demand or cause large unsafe-to-fly zones over the world.
* Volcano eruptions that fill regions of the globe's sky with engine-killing volcanic dust.
* Terrorism (the reduction in passenger demand in the wake, groundings while implementing new safeguards, related lawsuits in the aftermath, etc)
* Now-obviously: Pandemics (but even smaller epidemics have shown effects several times in the past couple of decades!)