Originally Posted by
Beagle
I don't think the Govt desperately needs it, (their books are in pretty good shape at this stage), but the lack of caution by the board, and / or their lack of foresight is concerning. I think its highly likely the next financial transaction between shareholders and AIR after this dividend will be AIR asking for money i.e. capital riase.
I cannot recall any company declaring a dividend before and then annulling it before its paid. Such a move to the best of my knowledge would be not only unprecedented but a serious embarrassment for the board.
The potential for very serious demand destruction going forward should be obvious to all and airlines trade on very thin margins with a very high fixed cost base. Once they have worked their way through delivering on the ~ $1.4b of prepaid tickets that existed at 31 December 2019 (and let's for the sake of keeping this simple assume a similar figure that existed at the start of February before this started to look really worrisome), which amounts to about 3 months worth of flights, by May 2020 this could get very serious for AIR.
If it was safe to travel in aircraft with this virus why have AIR stood their entire crews down that were working on those flights that the corona virus passenger was on ?
They weren't within 1 metre of that passage for 15 minutes like the ministry of health tells us is their "official risk zone". Who's telling porkies ? Ministry of Health, AIR or are we in some sort of state of malaise where nobody really knows how to accurately assess the risk ?
How long before the public en-masse, decide its better to play it safe than be sorry ?