Originally Posted by
TransWorld
My guess is everyone wants to hold their cash until this thing gets resolved. The only way I can see a purchase or merger would be one of the four big PAX carriers buying a small fish to save it from liquidation. Or then again, it may be easier to pick up the pieces after liquidation. Either way, it would be for a fire sale. Don’t see any of the big four being permitted to go under. Too few majors for the government to let one go away.
I think bailing out any airline as a result of current market conditions would be poor use of taxpayer dollars. The airline industry is not the only industry that is hurting and no other industry has received as much aid compared to ours. Allowing capitalism to work as intended - by allowing the market to right-size itself according to demand (survival of the fittest) is what is sadly necessary to allow the survival of most of the industry. Which essentially means the weakest players will not (or may not)
make it out of this. The loss of any major airline hubs will be quickly replaced with capacity by surviving competitors. Not to mention, most if not all current major hubs already have adequate service for O&D traffic aside from the dominant hub carrier.