9/11 made it very visible and realistic that a more business like approach is needed towards airline ownership. Airlines such as British Airways and Lufthansa should be able to benefit from economies of scale by buying other airlines out like SAS with your smaller unprofitable airlines who cannot survive on their own going under. Such situations like governments bailing out airlines because of national identity or pride is nonsense with this act being apparent in no other industry.
As was discussed earlier factors such as bilateral agreements, government bailouts, foreign ownership etc, all protect an airline, whereas in contrast, these barriers should not exist and for the good of the industry. Consolidation should be allowed to take
place with restrictions being lifted and less significance placed on an airlines nationality but more on them as business’.
The situation in Europe where every country has a national airline is an old idea as seen by the unprofitably, large fleets and networks of certain airlines. If these were to be merged than there would be greater efficiency with 3 or 4 major carriers and smaller carriers linking to hubs such as Frankfurt, Heathrow or CDG. This is what I would like to see happen but from things mentioned in above paragraphs, I quite doubt it.
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