KingB123 wrote:

Galwayman wrote:

If Virgin hasnt been able to make profits and build up reserves over all these years , it’s time to let it go ...

Wasn't Virgin in the red? (or still is?). I agree, the UK can survive without Virgin, survival of the fittest and no matter how many fan boys on here try to defend it. It's time to put it to rest.

anstar wrote:

Virgin have been loss making for several years now. Why should the government prop up a company that was already losing money in the good times?

Boof02671 wrote:

You do realize airlines are a low profit margin business?

skipness1E wrote:

As for SRB, well he burned his bridges on Brexit.

KingB123 wrote:

Boof02671 wrote:

You do realize airlines are a low profit margin business?

Of course I do, if you play the business right you can make your money. IAG have around £8BILLION in its reserves, enough to last it through the crisis. Others.. Well they've brought it on themselves in poor management and choices (not talking about corona)

delimit wrote:

KingB123 wrote:

Boof02671 wrote:

You do realize airlines are a low profit margin business?

Of course I do, if you play the business right you can make your money. IAG have around £8BILLION in its reserves, enough to last it through the crisis. Others.. Well they've brought it on themselves in poor management and choices (not talking about corona)

IAG is posturing. 8 Billion will not be enough to last it through the crisis. It will last it long enough for Virgin to fail before they have to ask though.

delimit wrote:

KingB123 wrote:

Boof02671 wrote:

You do realize airlines are a low profit margin business?

Of course I do, if you play the business right you can make your money. IAG have around £8BILLION in its reserves, enough to last it through the crisis. Others.. Well they've brought it on themselves in poor management and choices (not talking about corona)

IAG is posturing. 8 Billion will not be enough to last it through the crisis. It will last it long enough for Virgin to fail before they have to ask though.

tphuang wrote:

delimit wrote:

KingB123 wrote:

Of course I do, if you play the business right you can make your money. IAG have around £8BILLION in its reserves, enough to last it through the crisis. Others.. Well they've brought it on themselves in poor management and choices (not talking about corona)

IAG is posturing. 8 Billion will not be enough to last it through the crisis. It will last it long enough for Virgin to fail before they have to ask though.

Do you have IAG's burnt rate? Where did you arrive to the conclusion 8 billion is not enough?

Opus99 wrote:

Virgin is still in the red and going into this situation they only had about 82M pounds in reserves

delimit wrote:

tphuang wrote:

delimit wrote:

IAG is posturing. 8 Billion will not be enough to last it through the crisis. It will last it long enough for Virgin to fail before they have to ask though.

Do you have IAG's burnt rate? Where did you arrive to the conclusion 8 billion is not enough?

I don't. They could be the the special flower I guess; but I'd be enormously surprised given that the rest of the industry is a dumpster fire right now.

Waterbomber2 wrote:

delimit wrote:

KingB123 wrote:

Of course I do, if you play the business right you can make your money. IAG have around £8BILLION in its reserves, enough to last it through the crisis. Others.. Well they've brought it on themselves in poor management and choices (not talking about corona)

IAG is posturing. 8 Billion will not be enough to last it through the crisis. It will last it long enough for Virgin to fail before they have to ask though.

Indeed and the 8 bilion are not all on BA's accounts.
VS and BA should be allowed to enter administration and be fully nationalised until all of this is over and they can be privatised again, either as separate entities or as a merged entity.

tphuang wrote:

delimit wrote:

tphuang wrote:

Do you have IAG's burnt rate? Where did you arrive to the conclusion 8 billion is not enough?

I don't. They could be the the special flower I guess; but I'd be enormously surprised given that the rest of the industry is a dumpster fire right now.

That is quite a bit more cash than what Southwest is holding and southwest is contemplating not taking the bailout, which means they think they can get through with the cash on hand. Which is why I asked about burn rate. IAG is huge, but given that it's almost fully grounded, how much cash is it burning through? Witthout that knowledge, it's hard to say how long they can last exactly. And of course, IAG can also seek for help for Spanish and Irish gov't if it wants to maintain the position of no bailout from British gov't.

vhtje wrote:

VS is being supported by the UK taxpayer, like any other business in the UK: furloughed staff are eligible to have their salary covered at 80% of up to £30,000 pa.

Other area of support from Government are available to businesses, but, rightly, only as a last resort and only after all avenues of other conventional commercial arrangements have been exhausted. What is not clear to me is why VS cannot raise funds it may need through other means. Its 49% parent is still worth some £12 billion. That suggests to me there are plenty of other commercial venues available to VS: both Branson and DL ought to still be able to raise serious amounts of cash, even in the current crisis.

Treasury should look away, at this time.

MON wrote:

To claim Delta is unable to financially support their 49% share in VS at this time seems to be at odds with their purchase of further shares in a far larger partner airline just a few days ago, Korean Air.

delimit wrote:

vhtje wrote:

VS is being supported by the UK taxpayer, like any other business in the UK: furloughed staff are eligible to have their salary covered at 80% of up to £30,000 pa.

Other area of support from Government are available to businesses, but, rightly, only as a last resort and only after all avenues of other conventional commercial arrangements have been exhausted. What is not clear to me is why VS cannot raise funds it may need through other means. Its 49% parent is still worth some £12 billion. That suggests to me there are plenty of other commercial venues available to VS: both Branson and DL ought to still be able to raise serious amounts of cash, even in the current crisis.

Treasury should look away, at this time.

The same 12 billion parent who is bleeding money from the same crisis and is on it's way to the US government to ask for relief? That one? The one which has been consistently regarded as one of the best run airlines in the industry but still had its credit rating slashed to junk? Yes I can see how you would expect they should divert money from their own survival and contribute that to Virgin.

al2637 wrote:

If Virgin need a bailout, then the UK government can buy it for £1 and invest, SRB and Delta loose their shareholding.

If BA, need a bailout, the British government can buy it for £1 and invest, IAG loose their shareholding.
If EI need a bailout, the Irish government can buy it for €1 and invest, IAG loose their shareholding.
Ditto IB.

You can see why IAG don't want any of their airlines bailed out.

Government bailout means no other parties want to invest, which means the value of the shareholding is 0.

In this event, I don't see why any shareholder in any airline gets to keep their shareholding.

MON wrote:

Delimit, Delta had a stake of 14.9% in Hanjin (Korean Air’s parent company) by this month, up from 10% in September, while KCGI had 18.6%, up from 17.1% late last year. From a Reteurs article six days ago: https://uk.reuters.com/article/korean-a ... KL4N2BK1UM

through “acquisition of shares due to trading”.

onwFan wrote:

Experimental wrote:

MIflyer12 wrote:

VS is the largest single competitor to BA long-haul, is it not? Do you think passengers will be happy paying BA prices in an environment with less competition?

There are very few routes (SEA, LAS, some Caribbean) where VS is BA's only competition.

Exactly. Actually, only MIA and LAS come to my mind. In the absence of VS, DL will definitely fly SEA. And even LAS and MIA have competition from LGW through Norwegian. If I am not mistaken, there is not a single route out of LHR flown by VS that is not flown by BA.

cedarjet wrote:

If the U.K. government can’t afford to run the health service properly or give disabled people (including veterans) more than £94 a week in benefits, the last thing they should be doing is giving money to heavily polluting industries.

MIflyer12 wrote:

chonetsao wrote:

VS is not critical to UK economy as its routes are covered by other airlines. It should be rescued by its shareholder, not the UK government.

VS is the largest single competitor to BA long-haul, is it not? Do you think passengers will be happy paying BA prices in an environment with less competition?

Aceskywalker wrote:

As other people have echoed, if the UK is keen to inject money, then it should come at a cost to VS and its owners Sir RB and DL.

Opus99 wrote:

and then you have bransons tax issues which ministers aren’t to hot on

delimit wrote:

So, essentially, we don't like Virgin so screw those guys?

2175301 wrote:

When you have a major stockholder that is personally wealthy... any government bailout money should be tied to some kind of match program from the wealthy owner. Perhaps £1 government money for every £2 (or 3, 4) of the wealthy owners money.

cedarjet wrote:

If half of climate science is real (and it is), we should not be subsiding heavily polluting industries

lee757 wrote:

But how does the uk gov explain and position itself having to back a corporate entity which sued the NHS, the larger group headed up by a billionaire non dom.

Galwayman wrote:

( it’s more of a parasite than a competitor ) and it pays its cabin crew some of the poorest wages in the industry

KingB123 wrote:

IAG have around £8BILLION in its reserves, enough to last it through the crisis.

delimit wrote:

IAG is posturing. 8 Billion will not be enough to last it through the crisis. It will last it long enough for Virgin to fail before they have to ask though.

Opus99 wrote:

There's no scenario in covid 19 in which BA enters administration,

VS11 wrote:

skipness1E wrote:

As for SRB, well he burned his bridges on Brexit.

This is the real reason why VS won't be assisted.

delimit wrote:

Sure, we're making guesses to some extent. Southwest is rumored to object to the conditions of the bailout enough to push making a decision. The jury is out on what they will do. It also depends on how long you think this will last. The airlines asking for assistance now all seem to think this is going to last more than a few months.

zkojq wrote:

MIflyer12 wrote:

chonetsao wrote:

VS is not critical to UK economy as its routes are covered by other airlines. It should be rescued by its shareholder, not the UK government.

VS is the largest single competitor to BA long-haul, is it not? Do you think passengers will be happy paying BA prices in an environment with less competition?

Exactly. BA having even more market power in LON (especially LHR) is not in the UK's interest.

Aceskywalker wrote:

As other people have echoed, if the UK is keen to inject money, then it should come at a cost to VS and its owners Sir RB and DL.

Agreed. Any taxpayer funded loans should come with equity.

Opus99 wrote:

and then you have bransons tax issues which ministers aren’t to hot on

Not wanting to either make this political nor to excuse anything SRB has done tax wise......but really? I think probably it has the opposite effect with the current leadership.

delimit wrote:

So, essentially, we don't like Virgin so screw those guys?

Seems to be the theme for this thread.

2175301 wrote:

When you have a major stockholder that is personally wealthy... any government bailout money should be tied to some kind of match program from the wealthy owner. Perhaps £1 government money for every £2 (or 3, 4) of the wealthy owners money.

Including Delta? I'm not opposed to what you suggest btw.

cedarjet wrote:

If half of climate science is real (and it is), we should not be subsiding heavily polluting industries

Much more than half is real and you raise a good point.

lee757 wrote:

But how does the uk gov explain and position itself having to back a corporate entity which sued the NHS, the larger group headed up by a billionaire non dom.

You're suggesting that the government doesn't like billionaire non-Doms? And they could explain their position by making existing equity holders take a haircut.

Galwayman wrote:

( it’s more of a parasite than a competitor ) and it pays its cabin crew some of the poorest wages in the industry

Nope, that would be the BA Mixed Fleet....

KingB123 wrote:

IAG have around £8BILLION in its reserves, enough to last it through the crisis.

That's what market power at the most slot constrained airport in the world will do! You do realise that IAG money has to be split between BA, Iberia, Iberia Express, Vueling, BA CityFlyer, Level Openskies and Level Anisec, right?

delimit wrote:

IAG is posturing. 8 Billion will not be enough to last it through the crisis. It will last it long enough for Virgin to fail before they have to ask though.

Indeed. I just hope that the Westminster government is consistent in whether or not they provide bailout money.... somehow I suspect that they won't be.

Opus99 wrote:

There's no scenario in covid 19 in which BA enters administration,

In times like this making such bold statements is very unwise and risks resulting in deep embarassment.

NateGreat wrote:

jfk777 wrote:

Delta probably will no let Virgin die since they are too important to their Atlantic operation. Virgin Atlantic's slots are Delta's primary way into London Heathrow.

So, you’re saying that if Virgin fails, Delta is out of LHR? Yeah, they lose their LHR based partner. But, don’t they have their own slots at LHR that they have had since before Delta and Virgin teamed up?

jfk777 wrote:

NateGreat wrote:

jfk777 wrote:

Delta probably will no let Virgin die since they are too important to their Atlantic operation. Virgin Atlantic's slots are Delta's primary way into London Heathrow.

So, you’re saying that if Virgin fails, Delta is out of LHR? Yeah, they lose their LHR based partner. But, don’t they have their own slots at LHR that they have had since before Delta and Virgin teamed up?

Delta has a limited portfolio of LHR slots themselves. Delta flights tend to be from their hubs to Heathrow, Virgin gives them cities like LAX. SFO and Miami where Delta doesn't have their own flights. Delta needs Virgin far more than Virgin needing Delta.

skipness1E wrote:

jfk777 wrote:

NateGreat wrote:

So, you’re saying that if Virgin fails, Delta is out of LHR? Yeah, they lose their LHR based partner. But, don’t they have their own slots at LHR that they have had since before Delta and Virgin teamed up?

Delta has a limited portfolio of LHR slots themselves. Delta flights tend to be from their hubs to Heathrow, Virgin gives them cities like LAX. SFO and Miami where Delta doesn't have their own flights. Delta needs Virgin far more than Virgin needing Delta.

With Delta, VS just about make money as they have a partner. WITHOUT Delta, no one feed VS at the US end, whereas BA have American and United and Delta have huge onward networks. Without Delta, VS are a point to point carrier competing with network carriers in a cut throat market, marginalised and at a competitive disadvantage. Medium term, without Delta or a.n.other, VS will be squeezed out, they’re gonna die. The only reason VS bounced back, was Delta gave them focus and connections!

jfk777 wrote:

Delta probably will no let Virgin die since they are too important to their Atlantic operation. Virgin Atlantic's slots are Delta's primary way into London Heathrow.

Caymanair wrote:

The idea that VS shouldn't be supported in this crisis because a major shareholder is wealthy and lives overseas is ridiculous. Get over it.

The company plays a role in the British economy, and an outsized one as a very large firm. The decision to provide a lifeline from government funds must be made based on the level f public good arising from such assistance vs the negative effects of not doing so. Flybe and Thomas Cook were unfortunate but this is a substantively different scenario.

anstar wrote:

jfk777 wrote:

Delta probably will no let Virgin die since they are too important to their Atlantic operation. Virgin Atlantic's slots are Delta's primary way into London Heathrow.

Not that important. Delta could essentially just replace all the USA-LHR with their flights and take the slots. Not much left of VS after that.

Caymanair wrote:

The idea that VS shouldn't be supported in this crisis because a major shareholder is wealthy and lives overseas is ridiculous. Get over it.

The company plays a role in the British economy, and an outsized one as a very large firm. The decision to provide a lifeline from government funds must be made based on the level f public good arising from such assistance vs the negative effects of not doing so. Flybe and Thomas Cook were unfortunate but this is a substantively different scenario.

VS aren't that big. They only have about 40 odd aircraft. In terms of pax carried they carry about 5m a year. Flybe carried 9m and Thomas cook uk around 8m per year and they were allowed to fail.

Caymanair wrote:

The idea that VS shouldn't be supported in this crisis because a major shareholder is wealthy and lives overseas is ridiculous. Get over it.

Opus99 wrote:

Its not unwise to make such a statement like actually think about it. BA entering administration? BA is not virgin, the UK economy does not need virgin, the uk economy needs BA.

Opus99 wrote:

You’re clearly very hot on Virgin Atlantic surviving.

Opus99 wrote:

Well I wish them the best.

anstar wrote:

They only have about 40 odd aircraft. In terms of pax carried they carry about 5m a year. Flybe carried 9m and Thomas cook uk around 8m per year and they were allowed to fail.

anstar wrote:

Not that important. Delta could essentially just replace all the USA-LHR with their flights and take the slots. Not much left of VS after that.

Caymanair wrote:

The situation today is much different. Unemployment is soaring and the prospects for the newly unemployed aren't good... that's a significant cost to government. We can't reasonably expect any company to grow in the short to medium term to fill voids that don't yet exist, and the likelihood of 8,500 airline workers finding new jobs in the next 2 years is slim.

Caymanair wrote:

One can argue this isn't the time to let market economics dictate things exclusively.

Caymanair wrote:

the lay of the land today means that governments have to re-evaluate how involved they are in the economy and whether it is, on balance, more beneficial to spend money bailing out the economy for 12-24 months or dealing with the economic fallout for 5+ years.

skipness1E wrote:

jfk777 wrote:

NateGreat wrote:

So, you’re saying that if Virgin fails, Delta is out of LHR? Yeah, they lose their LHR based partner. But, don’t they have their own slots at LHR that they have had since before Delta and Virgin teamed up?

Delta has a limited portfolio of LHR slots themselves. Delta flights tend to be from their hubs to Heathrow, Virgin gives them cities like LAX. SFO and Miami where Delta doesn't have their own flights. Delta needs Virgin far more than Virgin needing Delta.

With Delta, VS just about make money as they have a partner. WITHOUT Delta, no one major feeds VS at the US end, whereas BA have American and United and Delta have huge onward networks. Without Delta, VS are a point to point carrier competing with network carriers in a cut throat market, marginalised and at a competitive disadvantage. Medium term, without Delta or a.n.other, VS will be squeezed out, they’re gonna die. The only reason VS bounced back, was Delta gave them focus and connections!