Originally Posted by MtnPeakCruiser

The last figure I saw was somewhere between 37 to 38 billion in debt. The world’s largest airline has negative equity. Someone once pointed out to me that with miles programs that legacies are essentially financial institutions with an aircraft fleet, and that their balance sheets are incredibly more favorable if you include the value of their miles programs. But I think the incorrect assumption there is that the airline and the credit (miles) program are the same entity; to my knowledge they’re purposely separate. And why would they scrap the value in their miles programs to save the books on a sinking airline when it’s easier to head straight for the debt iceberg and figure it out in Chapter 11? Sounds eerily similar to when AA declared BK in 2011 with 25 billion in assets (10 billion in cash) and over 29 billion in debt.

I may have gone off on a tangent.

The point is, I think this is part of AA’s business plan. I think it’s a foregone conclusion that when a recession comes again, AA will re-execute its plan and history will repeat itself again. And I do think they lean heavily on the notion that our government won’t allow their name to fail. However, if politics mean anything, I think them house/senate boys down in Texas would love to see an AA in BK during Biden’s administration.