Originally Posted by
sanicom3205
You’re talking about a company wanting to get out of the business of owning another airline. That’s entirely different than wanting to get rid of one of its three.
AA doesn’t need pilots right now. We will in two years, our retirements are off the wall. Unless you want to argue that we will be about half the size we are today in five years, in which case I would say you’re crazy.
Several financial analysts in the past 2 days see ZERO ways out of the current situation for AA. Parker gambled and lost. To his credit no one saw a flippin’ pandemic coming.
Based on the financials, AA wouldn’t be able to pay down their debt for the next DECADE and that is with a good recovery back to a healthy economy which we all know isn’t going to happen. They’re going to have to declare Ch11, shrink drastically both their crews and domiciles, and wipe as much debt away as possible. My guess is the company and flying live on, and the executive management team and the shareholders do not.
My prognostication:
Close LAX, LGA/JFK, BOS, and PHX. Shrink ORD and MIA. Keep their fortress hubs in DFW and CLT, keep DCA and PHL. Alaska and JetBlue will be codeshare partners and do the west coast and New England flying. Retirements will hopefully put a dent in the need to furlough super deep, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see an
initial displacement similar to United’s and perhaps more after.
For AA, it’s about more than just passengers returning and filling airplanes at this point. They have to find a way to be profitable and find positive cash flow. Only way to do that will be to restructure and shrink.