European airlines
Clearly, the airline business is deep, deep, in trouble. The intercontinental companies are doing the worst, as that's an area of travel that has near entirely ground to a halt. Here in Europe, the short-haul airlines have been able to work again. And can work on certain routes, and so on.
There are lockdowns in certain countries, air bridges and quarantines between others, and so on. But it is possible to run at least skeleton schedules between certain places - I know this directly, as one of the routes can be seen from my balcony. Very light traffic, but there is still some there.
Some to many - it depends on whether we include the very small operators in our listing - of such short-haul airlines have or will go bust. Certain of them will survive too. There's a significant temptation to place a bet on those that will survive. The wiping out of much competition could lead to better margins, as well as higher load factors. The expectation is, after all, that Europeans will continue to like taking holidays and short breaks (business travel is not a major factor for such airlines).
As I've said before, I'm not entirely sure about that. It's for precisely that reason that much of the competition is going to be out of the market. But it's the legal wrappers of the assets - the companies - that disappear, not the assets themselves. Planes are still going to be around, they might well become cheaper. Airports are still there, routes between them exist. I have mused that perhaps there will be a new wave of entrepreneurs. Actually, I insist there will be, but how successful they'll be is another matter.
However, there's one standout among the extant airlines
Ryanair
Ryanair (NASDAQ:
