British airways

We should take heart from BP’s £5.1 billion second-quarter loss, accompanied by a halving of its dividend. What’s good about that? Nothing — except that the loss reflects a write-down of the value of oil and gas assets that shifts the company to a more realistic footing for an extended period of low oil prices and reduced demand, indicating resilience rather than impending doom. In recent times, BP has lived through Deepwater Horizon, history’s most politicised oil-rig disaster, and extricated itself from TNK-BP, history’s nastiest Russian joint-venture. It operated when oil was below $20 a barrel in 2001 and when it hit $147 in 2008. It has plans to achieve

British Airways warns of 12,000 redundancies. Ryanair announces 3,000 job losses as ‘a minimum to survive the next 12 months’; Virgin Atlantic adds 3,000 more. The aero engine makers Rolls-Royce and GE talk of more than 20,000 job losses between them. Of all the sectors hard hit by pandemic, aviation is one whose prospects look blighted as far as the horizon. What should governments do about it? Global trade will return to pre-crisis levels, but business travel may never do so: why would companies bear the risk and expense when video-conferencing is so cheap and efficient? Even if vaccines against Covid-19 are available by next year, international travel will be