Poiu wrote: ↑18 Mar 2020, 15:59
But the value of that fleet has just been decimated, no leasing company is going to buy it from you for a descent price. The value of the 380s has been reduced to the value of the aluminium. LH Will have to book enormous losses on their fleet.
If you'd sell them now, yes, you'd have to book the current price as an exceptional revenue and book that off against the book value used so far (to book an exceptional loss or profit), but if you don't sell (e.g. used as collateral for a loan), you do not re-evalute the book value....
The LHG publishes their financial results tomorrow (unless that will be postponed), but I just went through their latest accounts published and the book value of their owned fleet is about 10BN indeed, which is simply massive indeed. Didn't know that in fact, but their owned fleet is like a bank vault on itself: liquidity is just one part of the equation.
As to who's the weakest: I'd say the weakest are those left without government backing, especially if this drags on for longer than a few weeks? In such a protracted scenario, my bets would be on some of the lowcosts going down, especially those with huge pan-European operations based in relatively small EU countries. I don't see how those governments can back them sufficiently to support their entire EU operations?
For reference, British airlines are requesting a bailout from the UK government to the amount of 4 to 5 BN!
(to the moderator: feel free to move this discussion to the general topic about the impact of the corona virus on aviation, since this conversation went wider than the title of this topic)