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Airlines themselves are perfectly fine. It's relatively hard to break into as a disruptor, but the employees of the established players are mostly well-paid. Th
by nonameiguess 2y ago
Airlines themselves are perfectly fine. It's relatively hard to break into as a disruptor, but the employees of the established players are mostly well-paid. The executives are even better-paid. The investors can earn steady, predictable, positive returns as long as the stock is reasonably priced and doesn't make assumptions about impossible levels of future growth. Airlines are not super-profitable, but with sufficient volume, you don't need high margins, and they're at least profitable as long as we don't have 9/11 or Covid happening.
I'm not personally knowledgeable about this or anything, so look into it yourself, but just picking a random really big one, United Airlines, it looks like they consistently beat the S&P 500 for most of the past 20 years, until Covid, and the past four years since then have been pretty bad.
- mapt 2y agoThey are profitable regardless in the face of 9/11 and COVID because we will bail them out. What they don't seem to be able to weather is significant changes in the structure of pension obligations, and dramatic fatal crashes. There is also an impending shift into electric short-haul flights that is going to cause some changes to the business model, with whoever can't adapt exiting those markets.