[thorwasdfasdf]

Worst case scenario: several airliners go out of business. the remaining ones get a bailout from the gov. 1 to 2 years later, these few carriers will have a massive monopoly and incredible pricing power. Flights costs for consumers will go up and up and up every single year like clockwork, not all at once. But gradually, little by little they will become increasingly profitable like we've never seen before (because in the past we always had competition, that's what keeps prices low). Without competition, flight costs can continue to rise to really high levels.

The most important thing in a market economy (aka economies that are not communist), is competition. Competition is the primary thing that keeps costs low. Without it, we (consumers) are all toast - however it'd be great for the stocks of those few remaining airlines (with enormous upside potential). Flying in airplanes is a mostly ineclastic good. this means, people can't just stop flying. All this is extremely bullish for the remaining airlines, in the long run (2 years+).

[dublinben]

>Flying in airplanes is a mostly ineclastic good.

The last couple weeks have shown this to be quite untrue.

[thorwasdfasdf]

That's a short term dip. People may be able to stop flying for a few weeks or months. but, all those businesses will still need people to move around the globe. then again, maybe this will prove to the world how unnecessary all those flights were to begin with.

[jfk13]

According to some figures I found with an extremely cursory search, leisure flights account for over half of air travel. So even before we start asking how many business meetings and conferences really require physical presence, there's a vast amount of personal air travel that is largely optional.

If this pandemic leads people to realise that so much flying really isn't necessary, and actually changes long-term behavior, that could be at least one silver lining.

[TravelPiglet]

Depending on if those businesses are still around in 6 months.

[hilbertseries]

If the airline profits are incredibly high then someone with a large amount of capital will start their own airline to compete.

[MikeTheGreat]

Starting a brand-new business to compete with an established monopoly/duopoly/oligopoly that's capital intensive doesn't seem like a thing that's likely to happen.

If people decided to enter markets purely based on profits then shouldn't there be a bunch of competitors for Google's search engine biz?

[oat_bravo_nap]

Well if what people are predicting will happen, then there will be a lot of bankrupt airlines that will have planes being auctioned off.

As to your second part, search engines aren't a high profit business; advertising is.

[macrolime]

You do realize that there are lots of low cost carriers that were started to compete with the expensive incumbent airlines?

[lutorm]

There will be lots of cheap planes to buy if you want to start competing though.