Ups and downs is part of airline business, question is who is prepared

The airline business has always been a cyclical roller coaster of ups and down and its sesoned participants would do well in remembering that after 7 fat years comes 7 meagre ones, not always on that schedule. How you handle it is different from country to country and sometimes from company to company. 

American airlines sway from one crisis to the next paying out all they cane to management, share- and other stakeholders in the good times. Always relying on that their government will see them as critical infrastructure and always bail them out. Privatise profits and socialise losses.


The top management of Ryanair on the other hand remembers 9/11 very well and have ever since insisted on holding on to as much cash and building up as much equity in the company as possible. They are a large company in a small and not very rich economy so they know they have to handle any coming crisis on their own. 


Norwegian fell into it because their current top management have minimal experience from the airline business so made a future plan based on that it would just tick over if all went well. When it all immediately went downhill they relied on financial trickery, foregiving lenders without options and that a rich government was going to bail them out. 

However even if Norway as a state is rich, most people are not and since the country is quite socialised and tax its citisens quite heavily it wasn't going to sway with voters that billions of nkr in taxmoney where being shuffled into a failed business. A business that wouldn't even pay hundreds of thousands of them back what it owned them. Even though Norway is a very long country and need airlines it do have in spite its small population more than 1 or even 2 operating there, so the government has options. 

So to have lenders and leasholders as the CoVid19 muddied skies of the market clears.

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