Aviation, nuclear power and public transport — along with good restaurants, golden retrievers and hand-knitted bed socks — are, as Julie Andrews put it, a few of my favourite things. So in a week when the news is as depressing as I can remember since the dark winter of 1973-4, I might as well write about all of them. I’ll try to find points of light along the way but it’s not going to be easy.
First the plight of airlines, now so extreme that it’s hard to foresee any outcome other than nationalisation for many major carriers. Even if the new ban on leisure travel ends, only pre-flight Covid testing and reduced quarantine can boost passenger numbers in the short term, while transatlantic routes will take years to recover. Cargo traffic is the only bright spot. IAG, parent of British Airways, Iberia and Aer Lingus, is the test case: its losses for the first nine months of the year were €6.2
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