The airlines also invested poorly this time around though. They spent all their money on dividends and buybacks instead of saving for a downtown. American Airlines, which was the worst balance sheet, famously declared they were doing so well that the airline industry wouldn’t hit a catastrophe again!

“American Airlines has been rather irresponsible with its capital allocation in recent years. As shown in the tables above, it spent the highest proportion of its operating cash flow (52%) on dividends and buybacks, despite also spending more on capex than any of its peers.”

“American paid for most of this capex by issuing debt and entering sale-leaseback transactions. Meanwhile, it returned a little more than half of its operating cash flow to shareholders over this period, mainly through buybacks.”

https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/03/25/american-airlines-...

This article tries to make the point that not all airlines were equally bad but let’s face it American was the first one to need a bailout and they definitely squandered their financial position.