For once, there is a delay in the airline industry that nearly everyone is happy about. After much haggling with the Department of the Treasury, the airline stimulus money is about to start flowing. This is good in that it prevents airline death in the near-term, but if you think this solves the problem forever, think again. Barring a demand miracle, this is just delaying hard decisions by a few months.
The government was slow to get this together, and the airlines pushed back when the rules started shifting, but in the end, the airlines needed money and an agreement was reached.
There was $25 billion set aside for grants to passenger airlines, but Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin decided to attach a whole lot more strings than Congress (and airlines) expected. In fact, after negotiations helped to reduce the burden, there will still only be 70 percent of those funds doled out as grants. The remaining 30 percent are given as low-interest loans with a 10-year term. In addition, airlines had to give 10 percent of the loan amount in stock warrants to the government.
Those warrants allow the government to purchase shares at the closing price on April 9 at some point within the next five years. If the airlines fail or stock prices somehow decline, then the government gets nothing. But if the prices rise, then the government can buy at the low price and then sell for a tidy profit at the higher market value. The government will have no voting power at all, so this is really just a way for taxpayers to recoup their investment if the stock prices rise.
With those terms set, the feds had to figure out exactly how to divvy up the money. Remember, this was supposed to be a payroll loan used to pay employees and nothing beyond that. So the amounts were divvied up proprotionately based upon the second and third quarter 2019 payrolls at each airline. The airlines ended up with about three-quarters of their payrolls from those months.
Of course, there were additional restrictions that were entirely expected. Those are:
- No furloughs or wage cuts through September 30, 2020
- No dividends paid out or stock buybacks through September 30, 2021
- Limits on exec compensation through March 24, 2022
- Minimum service requirements must be met through September 30, 2020 or longer if DOT decides to extend
Airlines are slowly trickling out details about what they’re getting, and as of the time of writing, here’s what is known for sure.
- Alaska
- $725m in grants
- $267m in loans
- 847,000 warrants at $31.61 per share
- American
- $4.1b in grants
- $1.7b in loans
- 13.7m warrants at $12.51 per share
- Delta
- $3.8b in grants
- $1.6b in loans
- warrants equivalent to 1% of Delta at $24.39 per share
- JetBlue
- $685.1m in grants
- $250.7m in loans
- warrants undisclosed
- Southwest
- $2.3b in grants
- $900m in loans
- 2.6m warrants
- United
- $3.5b in grants
- $1.5b in loans
- 4.6m warrants
You can see that there are some blanks in here, and we don’t have the details from Allegiant, Frontier, Hawaiian, and SkyWest. I’m sure it will all be announced and filed with the SEC as an 8-K in due time, but if you really want, you can do the calculations pretty easily on your own since the final numbers are based off public information regarding historical payroll, share price, loan amounts, etc.
The only two things we don’t know right now are how Mesa and Spirit will be participating. The expectation is that they will join in, but they are apparently still in negotiations.
When the dust settles, this means airlines will effectively be frozen in place through September 30 of this year. They will need to keep serving most if not all markets in the US — depending upon how the Department of Transportation handles exemption requests — and they can’t furlough anyone. Sure, they can cut flying and reduce hours (while pay rates can’t be cut, hours can), they’re still operating way above demand would require. Even with massive cuts, airplanes will be empty. This is now officially a zombie industry through the summer.
In the meantime, airlines will continue to bleed money despite these injections. Alaska says this will cover 70 percent of payroll through September 30. That is a big chunk of money, but with near-zero demand, the airlines will all still be deep in the red. Despite that, they have to remain frozen in time, hoping that a recovery will occur before September… which it won’t.
If anyone thinks that the airlines will be able to stand on their own two legs, er, engines, by the end of September, you should think again. I can’t imagine a world where that happens. I guess that means you can think of this as a starter kit for airline solvency. If October 1 rolls around, you can be sure that the administration isn’t going to let airlines lay off a ton of people. Those are people they want to vote for them a mere month later.
In my mind, the question now is more about how long it will be before airlines are able to actually make big adjustments to deal with the near certainty that demand will be significantly lowered into next year. That doesn’t mean it won’t rebound from where it is now — it will — but it’s going to be far below where it was before this coronavirus hit.
Unless the government is going to step in forever, the airlines are still going to have to make hard decisions. At this point, they’ve just been deferred.
54 comments on “Death of the Airline Industry Delayed”
Thank you for pointing out hours can still be reduced. I am still flying and I’m down about 35% in take home pay right now.
In my opinion, this “bailout” is pretty much lipstick on a pig. The truth is that there is no mention of maintaining average employee work hours, which is almost, if not more inportant than a guarantee of no hourly wage cut. If someone was making $20 an hour and working 35 hours a week prior to the crisis, how are they any better off now still making $20 an hour but working a total of 10 hours a week? Sure, it is great to still have a job, and many people are without, but with airline capacity cut 80-90$ YOY, the average airline employee will be devastated by this disaster well before October 1st ever rolls around. Again, acknowledging that lots of people are going to be horribly impacted financially by this crisis, but to sing the praises of the government for this money is stretching things a bit far.
I am torn. I have a great deal of sympathy for airline employees. Zero for the airlines themselves (I am looking at you specifically AA and UAL). Also, it must be nice to work for a too-big-to-fail company (I am looking at you specifically Boeing). Millions of people do not and can’t expect any kind of bailout whatsoever.
Same here. This is to big to fail/ kick the can down the runway in action. Meanwhile in realityland, average Joe’s job is in flux & all they will receive is a onetime payment of $1200 if single, double if married & $500 per child. If average Joe owes debts on credit cards & such or has late fees, the $1200 can be taken to pay them off. If this isn’t let them eat cake then I don’t know what is.
As a result, don’t expect average Joe to board a plane to go anywhere anytime soon as they focus on saving money. This is unfortunate for average airline worker as they will be able to survive only for six months & then what… pay cuts, job losses, further consolidation?
I have to agree. This is nothing more that the politicians playing favorites with a huge lobby. We all know that the Covid situation is killing the airlines, but this is what Chapter 11 bankruptcy is for. You shed old debt and reorganize as a new company positioned for the new reality of the business. This situation for the airlines has been compared to 9/11. Well, we bailed out the airlines then only to see most of them go BK and merge into mega carriers. Well, why don’t we just save the taxpayers some cash….let the economy lay waste to the airlines – which it will do anyway – and have them emerge on the other end, likely much smaller.
I know you don’t normally focus on cargo airlines, but could you please do a similar summary for them as well?
I can kinda-sorta understand the bailout to the pax airlines, but cargo airlines like UPS and FedEx should not be lacking for money right now, especially with international air cargo rates sky high right now (2-5+x pre-COVID rates, with air cargo from China to the US especially expensive).
On a more positive note, as a very long time reader of this blog the “dollar bills in the shape of fingers from two hands making a heart around the US Capitol building” image is one of the best images I’ve seen posted on this blog.
Kilroy – I just don’t know much about that side of the business, so I won’t be writing that up. But I’m sure other sites will be able to cover that.
Very interesting to note that airlines cannot lay off or furlough till Sept, but can reduce work hours. So does the “bailout” in terms of grants or loans factor in a 40 hour per week salary for its employees?
Raz – The money is based on the actual payroll from last year 2Q and 3Q.
So if there are lower payroll levels, it’ll just last longer. The money has to go toward payroll but it doesn’t have to be used in a certain period of time, I don’t believe.
Cargo carriers like UPS and FedEx rely on commercial carriers to position their crew out to where the aircraft is – to keep the aircraft flying in a region while crew is ferried in/out on commercial carriers.
This obviously doesn’t work right now so they are adapting their flight and crew schedules. This results in a much costlier operation for the Cargo carriers than normal. Then there’s the added complexity of hotels/transports in countries where strict lock downs are enforced. You might be able to land at airport Y – but very few services to distribute packages domestically are available. India is a great example of this.
Fair points with regards to the rest of the infrastructure and jumpseating.
I actually respect what the Treasury Secretary did with the combination of interest and warrants. The shareholders should be required to absorb some of the risk of this. That’s what an equity shareholder is all about.
The government’s plan reflects the importance of air travel to the U.S. economy. It also reflects that equity holders get the highest return because they take the highest risk in a company. One hopes now that the coronavirus problem will abate and the airline business will come back as strong as ever, with the government profiting and shareholders again gaining a market based return.
You are spot on with this article, CF.
Unless demand starts to recover fairly quickly, there will be wholesale airline failures in the fall of 2020.
And the US government is not going to pour more money into the airline industry which is largely reviled by many Americans, right or not.
The bottom line is that the US and the western world has to figure out how to overcome or live with this virus in something that approaches normality or life in the modern world is history. Airlines will be the least of anyone’s worries at that point.
There are airlines that were better run businesses before this crisis and there are those that were just plain a national embarrassment.
AAL’s CEO only extended the streak of hate against airlines with his appearance on national TV this week proclaiming that American will figure out a way to work around the limits on executive compensation.
Given that they will be one of the airlines that need government backed loans in addition to grants, it might come as a surprise to Parker that the US government just might decide that investing any more money in a business run by him is contrary to the best interests of the USA.
Airlines were seen early in the crisis as heavily impacted by the virus crisis; as the weeks have worn on, it is clear that most industries are or will be as badly hurt as airlines unless there is a return to normality.
Given that reality, there will be many businesses fail. The airline industry is no different.
Unless we intend to cower in the corner of our houses, there will be a need for transportation and for global air travel.
Those airlines that were well-run before will be able to adapt and survive while those that were marginal at best will be sacrificed.
Unless we intend to cower in the corner of our houses, there will be a need for transportation and for global air travel.
Once someone gets use to not having something in this case air travel, they may never come back once the opportunity arises. Also keep in mind there is a particular trauma that a portion of the public will be dealing with for a long time. that involves a mixture of agoraphobia, germaphobia & paranoia. “Karen” anyone?
Given that this is an election year, the extent to which the COVID-19 has been politicized (by both parties), and the high proportion of airline employees who are union members (plus the significant influence that airline lobbyists have), I’m going to have to disagree with you. As much as I hope otherwise, I doubt that this will be the last time the US government pours money into airlines, and I’d wager that there will be additional money / guarantees (or the terms of the existing ones relaxed) before the November 2020 election.
I do, however, agree that the optics of executive pay are just bad, bad, bad. Even as a person who tends to be pretty laissez-faire, I have a hard time with how much more management pays themselves than they pay their rank and file workers, especially during crises and downturns.
As usual Tim, your analysis is the opposite of “spot on.” You also exhibit Parker Derangement Syndrome, which — like the more widespread TDS — prevents rational examination of American Airlines. Cranky is definitely correct when he notes that, come Fall, the Feds will likely pump more money into the airline industry if it looks necessary. At this point though, there is no one on the planet who can make that assessment, largely because the scientific understanding of the coronavirus is fairly weak.
Please tell me what Tim got wrong? I don’t understand.
Tim the Feds are not going to let any airline that buys Boeing planes to fail. Boeing is going to need orders to survive and UA, SWA, and AA all have big orders. Delta on the other hand is AB only.
Actually they might. Too big to fail can only go so far if there’s little demand for flights & therefore the purchase of new jets. There’s always demand for money though.
Agree with Davey’s comments. Re AAL, Doug misspoke on the CNBC piece. Am fairly certain there are no ways around any of the Comp, buyback, or dividend restraints (although isn’t the warrant program a sort of dividend of sorts of the holders of those warrants?). And Doug knows this. But what will be challenging is to hold anyone who made more than 425k in 2019 at steady state for the next several years. Before union contract employees were written in as exempt, pilots across the big four would have been taking govt imposed pay cuts, at least those in group 3 and 4 pay buckets. Fortunately, CBA covered employees are now exempt. But for positions like technology, here’s where it gets interesting…and challenging. Neeleman is fond of saying he is starting a technology company not a transportation company. And he’s right. So much of distribution, ops, even the airplanes themselves are now reliant on tech. If your tech employees made more than 425k in 2019, they’re going to live under their 2019 rates for the next several years. Airlines will be bound to those limits, but tech companies like apple, google, Netflix, zoom, and the like will not. That is going to be challenging. And that is what Doug was referring to.
If we get bankruptcy/Airline failures i wonder what kind of failures we’ll get. The way I see it there are 5 types that we could see.
1. Full government bail out and ownership.
2. Merger of airlines on equal-ish terms.
3. Sale of the week airlines to strong airlines.
4. Getting assets picked apart by vultures.
5. Complete shutdown.
(This is more a scale than a list)
Given the lack of demand it’s hard for me to see all airline being able to consolidated or operate without options 2,3,4 happening. If 1 or 5 happen the union’s and Airline management would screen bloody murder.
The actual bailout numbers were smaller than I expected relative to the total operating expenses. I honestly can’t wait to see the airline balance sheets the next time they have a quarterly reports.
Possible Mergers
American—-> Alaska
Delta————> Hawaiian
United———-> JetBlue
Southwest—-> Frontier/Spirit
Nuclear option I believe not first choice for all involved. If it were to come to that. I’m ready to see people blow this up…lol
I would be surprised to see the big 4 buying up the smaller carriers.
The two exceptions I think could be Frontier getting bought by United or Southwest, and Hawaiian merging with somebody not named Delta or United.
I actually think that you could see JetBlue go after spirit because of the overlapping route networks and similar aircraft although the government may be a little upset about it. At the same time you would be creating a stronger Player to take on the big four and maybe throw in some divesture of assets to make everybody happy.
you never really can tell when you have a major economic crisis during an election year.lol
I wonder that if at some point with a stabilized. though smaller carriers, jetblue, alaska, and hawaiian can merge. I suppose that investors will see how far prices will rebound and how soon. For the longest this seems to me like a good combo operationally and financially.
Let me add my thoughts on each as it’s an interesting list, but nothing I say is at all absolute.
1. Full government bail out and ownership.
I don’t see that as being likely as state run airlines are more or less money pits.
2. Merger of airlines on equal-ish terms.
Possible, but I wonder what the tie ups would look like. Also how does one define equal-ish.
3. Sale of the week airlines to strong airlines.
Definitely, but even the strong ones will have weaknesses.
4. Getting assets picked apart by vultures.
One need only need to watch the film “Wall Street” to see how that would play out, but on a much larger scale.
5. Complete shutdown.
I could see that. There’s going to be a need for time to unwind all the debt obligations between carriers, leasers, airports & the like. Once the dust settles & all the financials look clean, then things can be back up & running. Unfortunately some bond holders may end up “taking a bath” as a result.
I would say the most equal-ish merger in recent airline history is the Delta/Southwest merger, with Route networks, employees seniority, plane types and management integration being respected. Yet Atlanta did get the HQ, and the IT system is Delta, so it was the dominant organization.
To me all other mergers are degrees closer to option 3.
Northwest… not Southwest, but I understand & thanks.
Wow my spellcheck is bad.
Heh, I thought my memory was bad :)
“J.P. Morgan analyst Jamie Baker notes that the Treasury actually took a hard-line stance. The grants aren’t free, as initially expected. Instead, 30% of the grants must be repaid over 10 years. That is “a significant negative development for the sector,” Baker wrote in a note this week. It reduces the industry’s borrowing capacity and implies that Washington won’t provide more assistance if traffic doesn’t rebound sharply.”
option 6. The weakest airlines will go through chapter 11 and in the process give up significant market share in major markets. There is no sale of assets needed; access to most airports is open with LGA being one of the few exceptions. Let’s remember, though, that after 9/11 when traffic even at LGA was weak, the FAA eliminated slot controls. If flights stay well below slot allocations for month after month, the FAA will simply relax slot controls. Same at JFK and DCA.
Chapter 11 works when you have demand and I have something to cut. Most of the airline bankruptcy’s in the 2000’s had way more labor costs to cut.
You have less labor fat this time and way worse demand.
Given the challenges you state it looks a lot like the bankruptcy of Pan-American to me The airline I had in mind when I wrote option five.
The challenge is that given the severity of the situation, all airlines would need to liquidate without government assistance. Given the amount of lead time required to start an airline (2ish years), the government needs to do something otherwise there would be no air service for a couple years.
I think a big difference among the mega carriers will be existing cash, debt and unencumbered hard assets before the crisis as well as how many employees take unpaid long term leaves. Delta is a clear leader in all areas with only $10B in debt before the crisis started. UA had $20B and AA had over $30b. Plus Delta recently announced they have 35,000 people taking leaves or 38% of their workforce, although there CEO says they need more. UA has 20,000 and counting. I believe all AA has said publicly was 8,000 in crews, although they all have payment schemes so they aren’t really unpaid leaves. AA may have a longer way to go to reduce payroll expense. It is unclear. UA also has a relative strength in that their unfunded Pension liability is substantially lower than either DL’s or AA’s. Alaska and Southwest also appear to be in better positions than others meaning Hawaiian and Jetblue and Spirit, meaning merely better than the worst. Can’t call any well positioned.
It is pretty clear cash is and will be king, with those that can loose money the longest being the survivors (if you can call it that).
What a horrible state of affairs.
It will be interesting to see if in late 2020, or early 2021, which carriers will be so weakened that they will be on the verge of collapse.
At that point I don’t think Uncle Sam will come to the rescue with long term support as Cranky alludes to. But maybe Uncle Sam will offer would bridge loan support, kind of like DIP financing, to allow the merger of some carriers that we would have never thought remotely possible in more routine times.
Approving mergers avoid the political fallout of bailing out “those airlines again”, while protecting a lot of jobs.
I suspect a few cities will lose their airline headquarters status some time in 2021 with resultant efficiencies to the merged carriers.
Do you think the ulcc’s have the assets to outlast the rest?
Spirit and Allegiant have few assets to barrow against, spirit only has ~50 of its ~150 planes as being non-leased.
Spirit and Allegiant are reasonable business models but I see them and frontier in trouble.
I am also a Jet blue fanboy so I have to point out that they only have 60 leased planes and only spent 1 of the 3 billion of there free cash flow on buy backs . Most of there spare cash now comes from mortgaging everything they own.
A motley fool publish an article in February that has a chart that shows long term debt to market cap ratio, Southwest 28%, JetBlue 31%, Alaska 46%, Hawaiian 50%, Delta 52%, and all other public airlines with large your debt to market cap ratios.
Obviously that was before the market caps got demolished but to me it still show relative strength.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/03/13/the-covid-19-pandemic-slams-into-airlines-are-ther.aspx
I think SY gets the edge if they keep flying for Amazon. Maybe some charters once sports resume. Given their reliance on leisure travel, I think G4/F9/NK are in big trouble.
Cranky — Any feel for the interplay between the federal payroll grants and the voluntary leaves/early retirements that so many airline employees accepted? American, for example, seems to have been very aggressive/successful in getting employees to retire and go on leave.
https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2020/04/10/nearly-13500-american-airlines-pilots-and-flight-attendants-agree-to-voluntary-leave-or-early-retirement/
Who now gets this federal money? Can we assume that if you’re on leave at partial pay and benefits, there’s no obligation for the airline to now give you your full paycheck?
The airlines had to promise to not involuntarily furlough anyone or cut their rate of pay.
However that does not preclude them from enticing people to leave or take a leave voluntarily which they are all working hard at. Also, the pledge is not to cut the rate of pay, which does not prevent the reduction of part time employee hours, nor reducing flight and cabin crew hours to the minimums,
I think that’s right. If people volunteer to step back, that’s allowed.
Fwiw, cutting hours is allowable, voluntary early outs allowable, voluntary reduced work hours are allowable. Cutting base rates of pay now allowable. What DL did in forcing a reduced work week in all non union employees is a bit on the jagged edge of the intention of this thing. They didn’t ask for volunteers, they just said everyone is working for 25% less and with reduced pay of 25%. That’s different than opting into a four day work week, or a leave where you sit on the beach for 50% pay. All of the airlines went at this quite differently, and then put their own unique spin on what they did.
The grants over the amount of payroll paid from this same period last year. Any employees taking a leave lessen that cost, so in theory, it would allow a carrier to stretch the aid out further.
That’s right and at least one carrier is doing just that.
“Death” may be a wee bit hyperbolic. I tend to doubt that the entire airline industry will die. But what I (and Helane Becker) think it will do is shrink – and maybe quite a bit. Ms. Becker predicts a 30% shrinkage at the end of 2020 versus the end of 2019. Quoting from her, “We believe airlines will be 30% smaller at the end of his year than they were at the start of the year. Also, we expect there will be between 100K and 200K fewer employees at the end of the year than there were at the beginning of the year.” She also feels that it’ll take the industry 3 to 6 years to get back to 2019 levels. I don’t have the knowledge or expertise to predict the future of the airline industry. But nothing would surprise me – except death – and maybe AmAir (a la Amtrak) …
In my opinion, all this “bailout” (which it isn’t) is really doing is buying time – both for airlines to restructure and for the affected employees to make plans for their futures. There are ways to “work around” the restrictions in the grants and loans other than those which could be viewed as nefarious- after Sept. 30. One of those ways is to offer early retirement buyouts and severance packages. Much of the money to fund these offers is already in place – in the various carrier’s pension and retirement funds.
There will also be a lot of collateral damage – to airports (the loss of landing fees will probably be substantial), regional carriers (two have already folded, and more could), areas such as Las Vegas, that rely heavily on tourism, taxi drivers, Uber and Lyft drivers, hotels, restaurants, etc. Arizona and Florida’s economies took a big hit because spring training was shortened. That doesn’t begin to account for all of the conventions, meetings, etc. that have been postponed or canceled. I’m also seeing a few virtual weddings and memorial services. Less travel means less revenue.
The airline industry may be affected long term by the newfound ability to hold virtual meetings instead of in-person gatherings, although person-to-person contact can never be fully replaced. Most of the meetings I attend now are via Zoom – whose stock has “taken off” (pun intended – sorry, I couldn’t resist) over the last few weeks. I always find it a bit disturbing when I see people root for businesses to go bankrupt and employees to lose their livelihoods. I’m hoping this “bailout” helps all of us adjust to the new reality, whatever it turns out to be.
I don’t believe anyone here wants commercial aviation to die, rather it’s a recognition that the system is too large for it’s own good on both a physical & financial level.
I thought I made it pretty clear that I don’t think commercial aviation will die, but I guess I didn’t. People and goods have to get from one place to another, but it seems quite clear at this point that the industry will have to shrink to meet lower demand. However, I’ve observed that a few people seem to relish the idea that their least favorite carrier(s) will be forced to go out of business one way or another and cost some people their livelihoods. I find that desire rather sad.
It is also relevant to this discussion that B6 and NK have been denied most of their requests to be exempt from serving many markets.
All of the speculation about low cost and ultra low cost carrier being better positioned to outperform legacy airlines has been severely shaken by this ruling. Legacy/network airlines are much better equipped to continue serving all of their markets even if reduced from one or two hubs.
That’s just over drama from you again. NK probably will not participate in this, but B6 is. In B6 case, adding 3x weekly to 10 destinations is only about 4 to 5 extra flights a day in each direction which they can use milk runs to reduce stage length. They do 150 flights a day right now. Adding 10 flights on top of that only slightly increases their costs. They can still cut 85% of their capacity. It’s really not a big deal.
AA/DL need to cut a lot more flights than they already have if they want to slow down their bleeding. At this pace, AA with file chapter 11 by Q4 even if it gets the additional $4.75 billion loan on top of this. Legacies will emerge really weakened from having to do so much furloughing.
well obviously there is a significant cost to operating a bunch of flights or B6 would not have asked for exemptions. Since they basically asked to operate to metro areas instead of airports and the DOT rejected that approach, B6 will be flying a lot of long flights w/ very few passengers because their model was to serve medium airports from large hubs on the opposite side of the country and the DOT said they must continue w/ that model or not accept the money.
In terms of percentage reduction in capacity, it is WN, not any legacy, that is flying lots of capacity that is not needed – even while asking their employees for concessions.
Thank you, again. Reading your posts and watching re-runs after re-runs of the Capitals’ and Nationals’ miraculous runs to the 2019 Stanley Cup and 2020 World Series championship, respectively, serve a wonderful purpose during these trying times.
Until we get a vaccine to get us through this mess, tell the airlines to rip every unneeded seat in its aircraft and make them contractors to the federal government serving the Defense Department, the Agriculture Department, (like running “milk-runs” that really are), CDC, FDA, etc. and as necessary, to help out Amazon, America’s farmers, its crop-growers, our drug makers, medical equipment producers, testing agencies, the Red Cross, etc.
Let airlines start serving anywhere that will serve a public interest. Let them take over the EAS routes that are not providing good jet service. All temporarily until we get the vaccine.
As to any industry employees who are surplus, get them jobs serving in the public interest. These are some very talented people. Use them.
Like wartime, pay, guarantee whatever is necessary. This all deserves a wartime response and the airline industry should be saved and used productively. We are in a war! Respond to it!
I’m old, but how could I forget, it was the 2018 Caps, and 2019 Nats!.
I like it!
Perhaps ALL the airlines in the USA will merge into one airline called “American Aeroflot”
I think you misspelled “Pan Am”. ;-)
I wonder if that would fly with Putin?
On a mores serious note, we’re going to see more large airports become more like Lambert in that many concourses or whole terminals will be forever closed or just abandoned. I’m thinking of T2 at JFK for example.