> who the hell could have predicted the world was going to shut down like this in 2015-2019 Market downturns tend to happen at semi-regular intervals. It's be

> who the hell could have predicted the world was going to shut down like this in 2015-2019 Market downturns tend to happen at semi-regular intervals. It's been 12 years since the last one. > People make it sound like they were buying back their stock as they were cutting flights and laying off employees. No but airlines were absolutely cutting the quality of their services. They bought back stocks at the expense of passenger comfort. Anecdotally, from 2015-2019 each flight I took was less pleasant than the last. When I travelled in the summer of 2019 our flight did not have vomit bags. Guess what? Two passengers vomited on the approach. All over the seats. Speaking of the seats, they were so uncomfortable that I actually injured my back as a result of sitting in them. > No business is going to hoard 50 billion dollars in an emergency fund for a pandemic that cuts 90% of revenue, that's just absurd. It is absurd under the incentives that business operate under. It's also absurd that businesses can operate until the point of bankruptcy, stranding passengers like what happened when Thomas Cook went under last year. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/travel/thomas-cook-airline-collapse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/travel/thomas-cook-airlin... > I really hate that this argument keeps popping up. I think the reason this keeps coming up is because regular people are feeling extremely frustrated at the moment. Average people are told they should save for a rainy day. I did and now I have the privilege of spending down my rainy day fund while the airline industry expects a handout for not doing so. > The reality of the situation is that these airlines employ a lot of people and enable even more commerce and economic activity through their operation. You can disagree with a bailout all you want, but if they go under, the economy most likely suffers by a lot more than $50B. Perhaps some of the impact can be mitigated by taking a portion of $50B and putting it in the pockets of the employees who will lose wages instead?