CAPA Live: American Air – long term optimism, short term realities

This report follows a discussion with American Airlines CEO Doug Parker, speaking at the recent CAPA Live October 2020 conference, on 14-Oct-2020.

US airlines are increasingly adopting a long term optimistic view, even as the harsh realities created by the COVID-19 pandemic force those operators to swallow a huge dose of short term realism.

In the current reality they face, airlines are celebrating small victories - what appears to be slow movement of demand trends in the right direction, and the shirking of gaping losses in revenue on a sequential basis.

And even as the general consensus is that it could take two years or more for traffic to reach pre-pandemic levels, American Airlines is bullish that it and its competitors have built up ample liquidity to survive the crisis - as long as demand steadily continues to rise.