The hotel association has to guarantee and pay the airlines in all cases if the flight does not meet the load factor required by the airlines to make a profit in most cases this would be 60% load factor and over for certain types of aircraft. That is best case scenario.

Pricing is a hard subject. If one were to book a flight 4-6 months in advance they will obtain excellent fares, book it 1-2 months before and the price could be double. Book it last minute and you may get a fare cheaper than the latter.

AA for example even though they have kept their pricing structure has cut a lot of flights, I believe it may be 40% from the peak years, which is a lot. Can you imagine the cost to layoff or keep staff on standby? Take airlines highest cost which are flight crews, AA had over 10,000 flight crew at one time...

It is a hard call, the low cost airlines may stay alive with pax constantly returning, but the day that does not happen they have nothing in the kitty for hard times, hence, close shop...