Immortal Airlines

Last spring, I remember how everybody was talking about how many airlines were going to go out of business, how this was the end of air travel as we knew it, etc etc. Fifteen months later, and as far as I can tell, very little has changed, and they’ve almost all survived. I couldn’t tell you the name of an airline that went under as a result of the pandemic - I vaguely recall that there were some small regional ones that busted at the start but that’s about it. We haven’t heard about it since.

Which is weird, isn’t it? I know that there were “government bailouts” but I don’t know anything more, and given it was briefly such a hot topic, that seems surprising. I feel like I’m missing something, and perhaps many of us are missing something, and going even further I think a lot of the possible explanations for this are deeply cynical and kinda depressing to think about.