Airlines around the globe are struggling to stay in business with the current pandemic. EL AL has been in an especially tough spot, as the airline hasn't been able to secure government funding, and more or less had to temporarily cease operations... at least until this week. The airline reportedly lost $140 million in the…
Continue reading: Israel’s Government Taking Majority Stake In EL AL
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Why not buy 61% for 150M USD? Do you think airlines buy planes from money they have? They buy these with someone else´s money and they will have the value of the plane as well as the loan for it in their books. Or they do leasing where you have zero asset on your books.
If only the US government was smart enough to demand equity stakes in the airlines it has bailed out
Such a shitty decision for the Israeli taxpayer (e.g. me).
There ain't no company bad enough as El Al around here, and that's a tough competition. Incompetent management, incompetent pilots, incompetent everything.
They all allow themselves to do that because they know the government is terribly afraid that without a flag carrier we'd all be doomed in case of a militaristic emergency, and believe that El Al would be the single airline that'll keep on flying in such circumstances.
The thing is- El Al just proved that it won't! It stopped flying regularly the minute it became unprofitable (like 4 months ago), held all of the ticket refunds hostage, and all that's while other companies (United, and Israir- our own small but actually competent airline) kept flying!
El Al should have been torn apart, with its aircraft being sold to Israir and its pilots too, this time with a salary matching their skills and not 5 times that.
Title is fake news. Government will only take a stake if the IPO fails to attract other buyers.
It's happening everywhere I guess. TAP is also back to the Portuguese government hands. It seems that they bought David Neeleman's share and now control over 72% of the company.
One way for El Al to stop hemorrhaging money would be to stop the practice of flying only six days a week.
It's definitely not fake news. Theoretically you're right, but there's no way anybody's gonna buy that piece of junk with the current position of the pilots union.
It'll definitely be up to the state.
So now the big three US airlines will start complaining about "ME4"?? Can't wait! 🙂