Displaying items by tag: American

(Atlanta)

If you have any hope for a quick airline recovery post-coronavirus, take that idea, crumple it into a little ball and throw it away. The reality of air travel’s recovery is looking bleaker by the week. On the one hand, additional safety measures are going to be necessity for a long time—and they will be costly. Extra screening, spacing out passengers etc all have significant costs. Additionally, many airlines will have to forego middle seating to create adequate distance between passengers, cutting down on capacity. All of this will come as demand for air travel remains low in the short-term and secularly weaker in the long-term. For instance, business travel for meetings, conferences etc all looks likely to be very slow to recover because companies don’t want to put their workers in harm’s way. Videoconferencing has also proven very effective.

FINSUM: There is likely to be a big clearing out of weaker airlines and several years of losses/less profit for larger ones.

(New York)

We have ben warning for weeks that as the coronavirus continued to spread, airline and other travel stocks would continue to be wounded (and likely not recover soon). That is happening n a big way today as news of a quarantine in Italy sent markets into a panic about the spread of the disease beyond China. Cruise ships and airline stocks are taking body blows as a result, with Delta and American down 7% and 10% respectively.

FINSUM: These are massive losses, and the worst part about it is that there is unlikely to be a “V” shaped recovery in these sectors, as it will take some time for the public’s fear of the virus (and thus travel) to wane even after things start to get better.