Originally Posted by aquagreen73s

FC, I have worked under Parker since the day he became a CEO, 19+ years ago. What is no longer speculative is his business strategy - a strategy that flat out does not plan for anything but usual economic events. There is no contingency planning as that would impact debt servicing and/or stock buy backs. Three times now he has been completely unprepared for black swan events, and three times now his airline financials have been exposed as having no margin to withstand anything beyond a normal, macro economic environment. Black swan events are completely off his radar, and that's likely why he would make a perverse statement that AA would never lose money again. In his mind that was true, but with the condition that the macro picture didn't have any black swans in it. This is why most of us pilots froze when we heard his proclamation because we sure as heck can't go to work thinking that nothing out of the ordinary will occur. It can, and over time certainly will in a long enough career.

So, my suspicion is that AA is in a very poor financial situation as that's exactly what the last two black swan events revealed. It explains the disconnect between AA's furloughs and just about everybody else. It explains why Parker could care less about the horrible optics of the two codeshares with airlines that aren't furloughing while AA is - deeply. The problem now is that this swan is much bigger and angrier than the last two.