Originally Posted by
C2078
AA pre Covid had $30B in debt, by far the most leveraged airline. After Covid, debt has gone up $10B+, and they have mortgaged pretty much every valuable asset. There is only one way this ends for AA, unless creditors negotiate outside of BK. A ver large chunk of debt is airplane debt, as we all know, they went on a huge spending spree the last 10-15 years. The only thing that might save AA from BK is aircraft financiers/lessors restructuring aircraft debt. Otherwise, how do you repay $40B back?
Yes, most leveraged airline. No, everything hasn’t been mortgaged (yet), but definitely a lot has. The other big two have very high amounts of debt too and at some point they’re going to have to go on a plane buying spree like we did. What really frustrated a lot of us was the stock buybacks. For years the union and Wall Street kept saying to pay the debt down first. We could have payed cash for JetBlue and Sprit’s entire fleets with the money we flushed on buybacks.... arghhhhh.