So if a person gets his paychecks and spends money to buy things, had a 6 month emergency fund, and decides to spend some of his extra cash on a vacation, new surround sound system and a boat...and then an economic collapse happens, so we say “you shouldn’t have spent money on luxury items like boats, you should have had 2 years savings!” So that person shouldn’t be eligible for financial assistance?

You can’t use hindsight for the airlines and say “they should not have done stock buybacks, they should have had unprecedented levels of liquidity, in case of a global pandemic that nobody had forecasting models for or if Godzilla himself walked in from the ocean and destroyed all cities in his wake. Just as the banks learned that more liquidity is needed for what was once unforeseen events, the same will be needed for airlines and should be tied to any government backed loan.

I don’t remember anyone ever saying the airlines needed more liquidity in the bank for a mass event like this. I do remember everyone asking for more profit sharing and higher wages from that idle cash. Hey, don’t blame anyone for that, but let’s not act like the pilots on this forum were screaming for more cash in the bank. We didn’t like that the cash was going to buy backs and not the pilots.

revisionist history perhaps....