Getting a reasonable return on their planes would hamper the case that "woe is us, we're helpless and need money", and yes, it's a common tactic, across many domains, to beg for help based on feigned helplessness.

But if other airliners are doing it, wouldn’t this create a case for the government to let you go bankrupt since you are clearly less efficient then other airliners?

You mean like how it let lots of banks fail because some of them weren't stupid and didn't need the money, proving that the failing ones were just inefficient and deserved to go bankrupt?

It did let a lot of banks fail in 2008-12 as fallout from that crisis.

Somewhere around 500 banks failed, with something in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars of assets.

Just certain banks were propped up because the powers that be decided it would have too big of an impact on things.

Too big to fail and all that.

The point is, the fact that you could point to another business and say "oh, they don't seem to need it" wasn't a definitive refutation of "woe is us we need the money".

Bank bailouts were given to banks that didn't need it. It was then paid back super fast.

For example US Bancorp didn't partake in much if any of the crazy stuff, and was financially pretty fine, but it still got a bunch of tarp funds it didn't need.

It wasn't always a case of pointing or whatever, it was a giant broad effort to prop up many sectors of the economy.

There is a good reason for that. If they only gave to banks in need, giving tells people that that bank is in trouble. And nobody would do business with the ones identified which guarantees that they are in trouble.

But they lent to everyone, and every bank knew that every other bank was good. Which meant that they all did business with each other.

However the eye-popping sums were misleading since these were short term loans. In fact that USA officially made $15.3 billion in profit off of TARP. (Which was about breakeven if you consider inflation.)

There are also many sets of numbers going around. For example TARP originally was supposed to be $700 billion, but only $475 billion was authorized, we spent $426.4 billion and got $441.7 billion back. The $15.3 billion profit that we made is very close to break-even when you consider inflation.

Surely the solution is for the bank/airline/etc to issue stock for the government to buy, rather than any bailout.

Nationalize the failed company, keep it running for strategic purposes, and privatize it to new owners at a later date.

Yea that's a big part of what tarp was. Banks sold preferred stock to the treasury.

It wasn't for nationalization though, the treasury didn't vote with its stock while it had it (also it was bought back).

Unfortunately governments no longer ascribe to free market capitalism but rather facilitate the corporate-crony welfare state. Efficiency is irrelevant when you've got buddies to line the pockets of.