The question who bought the shares of Buffet airline stocks. obviously, he didn't sell his stocks at the exchange and was a off exchange market or OTC sale. Why would anyone buy airline stocks, Buffet is lucky somebody is willing to hold the bag??? The guy unload how much of cash from selling his shares, it's in the billions right? normally, investors with shares like that are stuck with and hold it to bankruptcy and cannot unload it. The shares of airline stocks are so risky of bankruptcy, who bought those shares? Was it a put seller that sold insurance on those shares and gauranteed Buffet his investment won't go to zero?
There is enough liquidity in Airline stocks to offload a 5% stake over the course of several days. Take Delta Airlines as an example, if Buffet owned 5%, that would be around 30 million shares, not a problem to sell those over the course of 4-5 trading sessions. All transactions must go through the exchanges, there is nothing to be done OTC actually. Who will buy those shares, there are other investors who believe that Airline stocks will rebound, given enough government support and the ease of lockdowns. Mutual Funds, Pension Funds, even Hedge Funds specialized in distressed equities. Don't also rule out PE/Activist HF. You might hear one day that one of those Airlines will be taken private.
I think he sells through Goldman Sachs. He sells some in the open market. He will offer to them below market and they figure out how to offload the shares.