Good article, but I think it really misses some key stats. Here's a summary of the daily passenger statistics from the TSA [1]. We're still running around 25% of normal. The airline industry is getting absolutely annihilated this year. If Congress does not pass a new bailout, like this week, the airlines will be forced to layoff tens of thousands of flight attendants, pilots, mechanics, etc. For the most part, those are not jobs that easily transfer to other industries.
The economic devastation of coronavirus is just getting started for airlines. The lack of demand for jet fuel is going to have serious cascading effects throughout the oil and gas industry.
I'm not much of an economic expert nor do I really know how the airline industry operates, so I could be completely wrong.
My concern with an "airlines bailout" is that it is just going to prop up the industry for another quarter or two, when I don't believe that demand for air travel will return to pre-pandemic levels any time soon. So what if instead, we just allow the airlines to lay off tens of thousands of people and the money we would have spent bailing out the business side + workers just goes to the workers instead? It could even include job training or something else to help those that want to change industries. Then as demand returns many of these laid off workers can be rehired.
I don't know if this would work, but I feel like if we talking about propping up all the airlines then it's something we will be doing for several years.
You're absolutely right, that would be the better approach, but it is unlikely to succeed with the current Congress. A rational Congress would have recognized months ago that the economic effects of the pandemic are likely to persist for years, and that bailing out businesses is not going to solve this problem at all... But the Republicans are not willing to admit yet that this is going to be a problem past next summer.
you don't need to be an expert to know that you're exactly correct, all you need to do is look at how the airlines behaved when they got bailed out last time.
> So what if instead, we just allow the airlines to lay off tens of thousands of people and the money we would have spent bailing out the business side + workers just goes to the workers instead? It could even include job training or something else to help those that want to change industries.
This. Let the airlines go bankrupt but help the workers directly. If demand does come back some savvy entrepreneurs will be able to pick up the airline assets for a cheap price and get them back into business again in a few years.
>it is just going to prop up the industry for another quarter or two, when I don't believe that demand for air travel will return to pre-pandemic levels any time soon
This is 100% correct. Even if a vaccine were to be approved by the end of this year, it will take until mid/late next year before most of the developed world has received it. In the meantime, companies continue to find new ways of working remotely (I'm a tech consultant and have spent most of the last 20 years flying every week on Monday and back on Thursday, haven't flown since mid March). Extending the CARES Act airline bailout for another 3-6 months is not going to solve the problem, and continuously extending it for another 12+ months is not viable and a complete waste of money. The government should be figuring out other ways of redirecting resources idled by the pandemic, not propping up zombie companies forever.
From the standpoint of climate change I guess I don't feel so bad about this. There was much too much flying going on pre-pandemic. Now we've realized we can get by without so much. This will help reduce CO2 emissions significantly if we can sustain it longterm.
The economic devastation of coronavirus is just getting started for airlines. The lack of demand for jet fuel is going to have serious cascading effects throughout the oil and gas industry.
[1] https://www.tsa.gov/coronavirus/passenger-throughput