Airlines in a Crisis

There is little new and inovative thinking when Norwegian goes hat in hand to the government and asks for money. Its the traditional story of more loans, more shares, business plan and selling stuff other than seats, which is what an airline should live of. What is needed is a new aproach instead of the same as every other business on the planet. Airlines are different. They sell something even civil servants are interested in performing their work, travel. Not that we expected anything innovative or airline related from the newbie to the aviation world that the CEO of the airline Norwegian in reality is. Norwegian should go the the government and say we need 3 to 4 billion Nkr now for forward ticket sales that the civil servants can use for travel over the coming years. Preferably after normal forward sales volumes have been reestablished. As a caveat it should promise to use some of that to refund outstanding claims from customers that didn't travel due to lockdowns. Who will...

What is Norwegian doing. They have only managed to fly 10% of the number they flew last year. Ryanair on the other hand have flown 50% on 2/3 of the amount of flights they flew last year. That is about 72% of seats on every flight sold compared to 97% for same period last year. This lead to that Ryanair had no problem getting in an extra 400 million cash from sale of new shares. This is about twice what Norwegian says they need to get through the next 6 months. But who is going to invest in a company that already this year have burnt their shareholders. In fact a  company that has made a habit of doing it nearly every year. Not without getting in some new brooms rather than the one that after just a few months in the job abandoned them alltogether. Fact is in the airplane business there is always some crisis going. 9/11, oil price above USD 100 and whole fleets grounded. One can't just hibernate and wait them out but need to produce whatever one can no matter what the circums...

A number of airlines in the US is practicing middle seat free on flights to provide some degree of social distancing. No airline in Europe have taken this aboard to try to improve the public confidence in that flying can be safe weven in pandemic times. Although Ryanair was once modelled on Southwest, it's leader have been outspoken on how unwilling they are on doing anything to placate its potential customers worries.. While Sothwest is practicing middle seat free and have promised its potential passengers to continue to do so. At some stage even European airlines will hopefully come to the conclusion that even bargain basement fares is not going to entice the large majority of the audience back to flying. And with the capacities they have built up they can't live on the 25% of the population that don't care and will travel anyhow and anyway. Even if they could bully governments to lift restrictions, they can't bully the nervous and wait and see majority of the pub...