We need a way to include "black swan readiness" in corporate finance / valuation. Historically, it's not something investors have cared about, so corporations haven't done it.
Black Swans cannot be prepared for, that's what makes them Black Swans.
One of the principles is:
The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities).
How do you establish an emergency fund for something with a non-computible probability? How much money should you put aside for it?
I think a lot of people just don't understand the math here.
It's not like travel demand won't come back.
Airlines aren't an SaaS business where you just scale down AWS and youre good.
In terms of a company having a healthy balance sheet, there are many well known metrics that can signal that a company is at higher risk of bankruptcy.
E.g. acid test, interest coverage ratio, Altman z score: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altman_Z-score
The Altman Z score was defined over 50 years ago and can be approximately competed using the standard accounting data that public corporations are required to report to investors.
I'll push back a bit: there are ways of measuring/ estimating some of these. If you read an old school book on value investment, some of these ideas may be covered. Why not use them when considering how to invest wealth?
Except Southwest -- which had the other airlines whining because they had an "unfair advantage" with their locked-in lower prices.