Comments

1. Viewfromthewing I think you should change your website name to HOWTOHATEAIRLINES. Next time anyone of your employees has to go to some different country or travel to different state please use your own car, train or best go by foot. If you are that against bailout of airlines and for your information airlines employees pay as much tax as any other may be more than the one writing this article. And airlines is just a name but there are thousands of workers with family working in it not just pilots and mechanics but baggage handler and ground staff. So before posting any hateful articles please make sure know what you are saying.

2. @ Gary — This is why I stay home.

3. Saying the airlines have “plenty of access to private capital markets” as a reason to deny federal support misses a pretty major point. The reason they have access to capital markets in the first place is ONLY because the markets expect federal support.

   And while your logic about letting some go bankrupt so the industry shrinks and allows others to recover more quickly would normally be fine to assume, it wouldn’t apply in this scenario because there is no revenue clarity so they would all go bankrupt and there would be none left to benefit from the reduced industry capacity. Just massive capacity reductions.

4. Let the President know; bet he would be responsive, and you seem to have the details.

5. Have you sat in one of these Oasis seats yet? How long of a flight can a normal size person tolerate it?

6. I’m A-Ok with a small bailout – if and only if, common equity holders are wiped out.

   @Jessica, I’m sure you have pushing hard for bailouts for workers at restaurants, hotels, amusement parks, ski resorts, marina’s, stadia, and the full gamut of hospitality workers. It’s not that airline employees are any more or less deserving it’s just that airlines have already gotten a massive bailout and 6 months later are back to the trough for another. And, as Gary has pointed out, the $25B they are asking for goes way beyond the cost of keeping the employees on the payroll. United couldn’t even live up to the modest requirements of the first bailout, with respect to their employees. And even among those who are retaining full time employment, I don’t see any pilots or senior FA’s at the big 3 giving up any of their compensation to keep fellow employees on the payroll

   Let’s not forget, United and Delta dumped their pension liability onto the taxpayer when the failed the last time, so we are on round 3, not round 2.

7. Let’s face it. You can’t Torquemada anything.

8. So – painful seats becoming more prevalent, gun toting people who should be in jail for violating federal law but instead get away with a wink and a nod and separate instances of elected idiots who are clearly demonstrating that they couldn’t care less about normal people. Lovely.

9. That Senator should at LEAST be holding a water bottle, or have a bag of chips in his lap.

   Water Bottles – The Immunity Idol for Not Wearing a mask.

10. @ Jessica why so angry? Maybe you are losing your job? The airline industry has always had layoffs in the past. The point of this article is that American is accepting tax money for employees and sending it to overseas to make the travel miserable.

11. there are some savings available by cutting executive pay at the airlines, selling airplanes, and the like. The idea that they would need another $25 billion present, when so many other industries and businesses are not getting any help whatsoever and are fighting for survival, is repellent. That includes theaters, concert halls, orchestras, restaurants and many others – which are all culturally important in the way that an airline is not.
    Thank you Gary for being practically the only person speaking about this honestly. Airlines just had a decade of fat years and they chose to squander all the money with stock buybacks, lavish compensation for their executives and stupid cabin retrofits that everybody hates.
    Perhaps there is a way to claw some of that money back from the executives who were paid so much more than they deserved and appear to have done such a poor job planning for the future?
    Finally, if demand is incredibly low for the next year or years, it does not make sense to keep these thousands of flight attendants and other workers on the payroll – at some point that would be taxpayers paying for people to do nothing.
    Rather than a bailout, extend unemployment aid substantially, so that all these people can get through the recession and have the time to look for other work. (or can eventually be hired back by the airline when things have recovered). The Great Depression would not have been that squalid if there had been unemployment aid, food stamps, and all the other programs we have right now. We already know all the tools required to get through this, and also know when the crisis will be over (once Covid19 is over)

12. Members of congress while traveling to or from a session of congress aren’t supposed to be detained per article 1, section 6 of the constitution.

    “ They [Congress] shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”

13. @DaninMCI – that refers to *government action*, it doesn’t exempt the Senator from a private company’s mask requirement.

14. @DaninMCI – Interesting that they have a Get Out Of Jail Free card for misdemeanors. In that case, hopefully the state has a felony law to arrest him, and if they don’t then the maximum fine should apply. If nothing else, it’s critical to illustrate that members of Congress are not immune to laws meant to keep plane loads of people from dying from stupidity or malice.

15. @DaninMCI – I still think that anyone who tries to bring a gun on a plane should be on the no-fly list for life. After a few prominent examples, people’s memories on not bringing firearms on board would suddenly improve.

16. Torquemada configuration
    So happy to know there are people that still read!

17. It is not often that I disagree with Veronique de Rugy, and I am not going to this time. As usual, that was a well thought out and well defended analysis, although far too wordy.

    Unlike the airline bailout several months ago, this is no longer an economic emergency. It is extremely difficult to defend any targeted bailout. If our overlords see a need for more stimulus, I do, then the best course of action is to simply decide how much they need to juice the economy and send everyone a check, and let people decide where to spend the money. The idea of giving away lottery tix to one group of people, but not to their neighbors, is indefensible.

18. Gus loved your comment the one line that got me was (at some point we will be paying people to do nothing) we already doing that with welfare we the taxpayer pay millions of people to do nothing. Then you have Congress how much do we pay them to do nothing.