Besides management incompetence I believe our financial laws would also need to be updated. If airlines accumulate a lot of excess cash doesn't it make them a juicy hostile takeover target ala Lorenzo and Icahn? There was definitely some things management should have done differently which would have minimized our exposure or at the very least it could have bought us more time to respond.

This is all Monday morning quarterbacking but why not use some of the free cash flow to pay cash for Jets? Fuel costs decrease greatly with a reduced flight schedule. Employee costs can also be reduced with leaves, SILs, early outs and furloughs depending on the time period involved. But I assume aircraft loan payments must go on. Perhaps DAL can get a grace period. Another thing to look at is a one time dividend bump, stressing the one time aspect so it would not be expected and not seen as decreasing dividends. Not even sure that would work.

In any case the very nature of stock buybacks for airlines seems to make them counterproductive. The only times airlines have extra cash to buy back stock is when things are humming along - consequently the stock is usually priced high at such times. When the stock is in the dumps (ie now) airlines usually don't have any excess cash to buy back shares.

So to answer your question - No I don't see anything being changed by management either learning or becoming more altruistic. If any change comes in my opinion it will be structural and encouraged through updating laws and financial rules.

Scoop