Just say "NO!" to bailing out the airlines
Anyone who has travelled by plane in the past decade knows exactly why they were and are on the verge of bankruptcy: they converted themselves into low-margin versions of Greyhound buses, with the crowding and chaos and lowlifes we used to see in Greyhound and Trailways bus terminals 30 years ago.
I'm not being elitist, just noting the obvious.
They bought extremely expensive pieces of machinery (jets), with borrowed money, and then counted on keeping them at 80%+ capacity in order to meet their debt payments. And a dozen of these airlines all set themselves the goal of being "the next Southwest," complete with the InstaTicket cash machines, long lines, and cattle-cars-to-Aushchwitz amenities. "Would you like a second 1.5 ounce bag of pretzels?"
Not surprisingly, these cattle cars in the sky face bankruptcy if the flow of cattle slows for even a few days.
So now we are to bail them out.
Why not bail out Circuit City, whose sales of big screen t.v.s have plummeted? How about Intel, as people quite reasonably put off purchases of 1.7 GHz PCs? How about Ford, where SUV sales have all but stopped?
Bailing out the airlines and other industries is state socialism. And as with most cases of socialism, it perpetuates their bad ways and punished those (few) companies who prepared.
Besides, the shut-down of several airlines due to bankruptcy liquidation will dump a lot of planes at low prices on the market, will reduce overall capacity, and will help restore the industry to the new lower level of flight reality. I wouldn't want to hold their stocks, though. Nor Boeing's.
--Tim May |
