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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

It's a painful situation. There will be pain, suffering and A LOT OF economic loss. Somebody will have to pay for that loss. Guess who? The people! There's literally noone else to do it... how to distribute the burden? "fairly" (each person has a different idea what that means) ... at least people who afford air travel probably have a bit of money they can lose without suffering too much.

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I’m sure the company will be able to suffer through the losses - and if it can’t, was it a viable business in the first place?

I don't think any business plan accounts for half of the worlds population suddenly not participating in the world economy.

Businesses with bad plans fail every day.

Any business plan that included "preparations for never before seen economic disruption due to global pandemic" would be hilariously bad.

A plan that included saving rather than leverage would be well suited to many sorts of disruptions. You couldn't hire McKinsey to write it for you, however.

Underlying all this whinging there seems to be a remarkable expectation that the world is supposed to be fair, and when it's not the taxpayer and the Fed should make it so. If the objects of all this fairness were human, I could see the point. However, you're talking about corporations, so there is no point.

Since you seem to imply that one can make a good business plan for an airline accounting for such high risk, please present one, or point to one that has succeeded.

That's not the right question. The right question is, do we want to have airline companies running planes or not? And if "yes", is it an actual long-term profitable business, or is it "years of tiny profits followed by bankruptcy" a.k.a. something no sensible investor would invest in.

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