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A comment on Airlines want to cancel rule requiring them to refund fares for canceled flights. Parent comment

Re:Airlines want to cancel rule requiring them to refund far... by chewbacha on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @06:32PM (#22808167)
About 50 billion which is what American was asking for. Considering they have posted between $3-15 billion [0] in quarterly profits over the past 10 years, it seems reasonable that they could have saved a rainy day fund _and_ bought back stocks.

[0] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAL/american-airli...

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Re:Airlines want to cancel rule requiring them to refund far... by whatok on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @06:43PM (#22808260)
That data looks wildly inaccurate and does not pass a sanity check at all. Take a look at anything from AAL's investor relations' page and it does not reconcile to anything like 3-15bn quarterly profit ever.

https://americanairlines.gcs-web.com/sec-filings

Here's their latest quarterly filing:

https://americanairlines.gcs-web.com/node/37821/html

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Re:Airlines want to cancel rule requiring them to refund far... by otoburb on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @11:43PM (#22809839)
To review the profits that AAL posted you should look at the "Net Income" charts[1], and not the "Gross Margin" charts that you linked to.

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAL/american-airli...

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Re:Airlines want to cancel rule requiring them to refund far... by EpicEng on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @08:35PM (#22809007)
You are completely misreading those charts. The interval is 1Y, not one quarter.
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Re:Airlines want to cancel rule requiring them to refund far... by soared on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @06:39PM (#22808236)
You want them to save half their money? That makes no sense
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Re:Airlines want to cancel rule requiring them to refund far... by claudeganon on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @07:09PM (#22808452)
The current reality would require them to have those reserves as opposed to being bailed out, so by all meaningful definitions, it does, in fact, make sense.
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Re:Airlines want to cancel rule requiring them to refund far... by smabie on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @10:10PM (#22809445)
No, I don't think it does. Just because an event of very small probability happens does not mean it is rational to waste half your cash preparing for it. What determines the right actions in regards to mitigating risk has little to do with the realized events; instead, it's better to look at the probability of said event. Not saying they shouldn't have saved some cash for a pandemic, but the fact that it's happened isn't an argument for them to have done so.
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