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Comment by blinding-streak | Hacker News Reader

The entire airline industry (and travel as a whole) is under incredible stress right now. Many airlines have already gone bankrupt [1], and most others are near the brink. I don't think there's going to be any shortage of lawsuits going forward.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-airlines-that-fa...

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Most of the US airlines took the COVID bailout bill money. That bill required them to maintain specific service, and avoid layoffs through the end of September. Expect some chaotic changes in October.

Do you think the US gov won't renew those?

I suspect several of the airlines are now itching to do layoffs. It's hard to sustain the same number of employees when the traveler numbers are down so badly. They are all losing money despite the bailout.

True. I think this comes down to: will the US gov just continually print money while there is a slowdown from both top down lockdown and also people just trying to stay safe.

AA already laid off 30% of their management jobs, tho officially only starting October 1st.

I don't think they will. There is no appetite for that sort of bill right now. There's general crisis fatigue, and the Senate won't take up a bill the President won't support. The President won't support anything that does not align with the theme of re-opening the economy.

For example, congressional discussions on a "Phase 4" financial support package have been pushed back and back for over a month now.

The sense of urgency is not helped by the fact that the deadline to apply for PPP funds passed yesterday, with over $130 billion unspent.

I suspect a lot of the lawsuits will outlive the airlines filing them.

Bankruptcies can take years or decades.

I know Lehman brothers is still working it’s way through. But that’s a financial institution that innovated too much making things complicated. But that’s more of a liquidation.

We have plenty of experience with airline bankruptcies, and they’re basically all the same.

United Airlines took 38 months. American Airlines, about 26 months. 2 years for Delta.

The problem is the domino effect: a newly recovered airline is much leaner and tends to put the non-bankruptcy filers at risk.

Maybe we can reboot it with dedicated per-route mini-airports with oriented runways that lob electric planes between cities, like high speed rail but without the right of way issues and monstrous capital cost (for a big country with a lot of empty space like the USA).

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