Originally Posted by
Cheddar
Who’s in the better position for a “short term” downturn? The cash strapped low debt DAL or the accidentally cash ‘rich’ AA?
I’ll take a shot at answering this. It is without a doubt much better to be a low debt airline right now. Delta has stated they will have $12-14B in the bank by the end of June, without the CARES Act loan they’ve applied for but are hoping to not need. Please correct me if what I’ve read is wrong, but AA has said they will have around $11B in cash (with a higher daily cash burn rate) by the end of June but that includes the second phase of the CARES Act loan of about $4.8B.
Secondly, Delta’s unencumbered assets are estimated to be about $8B. Everything I’ve read has said these same assets available to AA are much lower, though I couldn’t find a number.
I’m a Delta guy so please don’t interpret any of this as snarkiness. I hate we are all (the airlines) in this position for the foreseeable future. I strongly disagree, however, that AA has a better cash position than Delta and I think the publicly available information supports that conclusion.