[gsnedders]

To be fair, the leasing companies may well be more inclined to give them a pause on their payments now than normal. If they repossess the aircraft for lack of payments, what other customers do they have for them in the short term?

[godzillabrennus]

None but they can sell them to another group of PE and recoup the Capital their investors are probably clamoring to reclaim in light of the industries issues.

Their LP’s would probably take a hit to unlock the cash and get into something more likely to rebound faster.

[Tuna-Fish]

Norwegian and it's subsidiaries currently operate a fleet consisting mostly of 737-800, which were being upgraded to 737 MAX 8, with 3 delivered so far. Some subsidiaries have a few 787's, and they did have 30 A321LR on order.

The 787's and the A321LRs are good planes that they could sell, but the 737-800 is an obsolete plane which has a very hard time operating with a profit when competing against the new crop of fuel-efficient narrow bodies. You can't really sell them to anyone for any reasonable amount in the current market. MAX 8's are also hard to get rid off, but for a different reason.

[toomuchtodo]

737-800s will go to the boneyard.

[HenryBemis]

Selling won't work. If suddenly "many" airlines start selling, the demand won't be that high, and 1) the prices will plummet and 2) there won't be enough buyers so some airlines will be severely damaged (anyway)(better fewer than all I guess).

[pbhjpbhj]

Rental relief has to work its way through the whole system, if anyone reneges on it they can bring the whole thing down. The lease company leasing aeroplanes to the airlines might have buildings they lease, hangars maybe. Suppose they spend lots of money re-possessing _all_ their aeroplanes because of non-payment (no one travelling). What now? They have no income from rental (and a heavy delay on people setting up new airlines to cover routes that have no people able to use them yet), they've spent heavily to re-possess, and now they also can't pay their own overheads. So, they too will go out of business, surely.

Then the company they got loans from has a repayment deficit, they can repossess the leasing companies assets, and pay to store them, and try to sell them ... but they're going to be getting pennies-on-the-dollar (who wants to pay to store aeroplanes they can't fly for profit?). Duplicate that over the other loans they called in in other industries; now they're burning cash as well??

If the top of the tree, the banks or capitalists, can hold out then they stand to make a tidy packet when markets rebuoy but even then there'll be a huge lag if they laid off multiple tiers of companies.

Either we all have to agree not to force each other to close down, or we all do each other over. It's not pretty.

I'm wondering what happened in 1918 with "Spanish Flu", people instigated social distancing then - closing down schools and churches - so presumably there were businesses too that couldn't pay their rents? I imagine things were less severe because more businesses would own their resources, and would be part of communities that would collapse if they called in what they were owed.

[CydeWeys]

Hopefully that's what ends up happening.