There are global players in many industries and to get to be global often they acquire large national companies in countries to expand to those markets.
Why is it with Airlines that there are no global companies owning airlines across multiple nations?
Virgin is the closest I can think of and even they do not actually own the airlines, just the name in some places (Australia).
My only thought is that airlines are not exactly huge profit centres?
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Correct me if im wrong but we “attempt” to crush monopolies in businesses before they reign too dominantly…and airlines are powerful enough to complain whenever some company gets…too powerful, so they wont take massive buy ups into mega corporations lightly…also try affording a buy up of another leading airline to become that global monopoly..that will cost a lot more than twitter.
We do have quite the global airline for hauling supplies.. theres only a handful.. this space thrives though because they basically buy older aircraft from the passenger business..ups and fed ex and amazon come to mind…ups very much acts reliably and globally.
Also for things like large large haul aircraft.. antonovs come to mind, theres a reason why the world grieved the loss of the an-225 mriya… that thing was an important link to some very specific large haul freight services..no other plane or company can do.. they were running a global business here… so if you go global you got to own something…very special that can make you a global player.
Another thing.. airlines are notoriously difficult to hold up and alive. All you need is a few flight delays, strikes or something like covid or an economic struggle.. for airlines to cave in within weeks.. having planes sit around hurts airlines a lot.. lufthansa which is massive for instance.. constantly gets bailed out by the goverment just like many other airlines….so an airline may just not have grown that big yet.
What you see with those really massive players: they basically buy airlines and planes of airlines that just caved in… but ultimately the bigger they are the harder they fall.
Because there are alliances of airlines instead, who have come to some sort of major cooperation agreement. They tend to be distributed in such a way that they serve globally. The main 3 are Star Alliance, SkyTeam, and Oneworld.
Some of the benefits of an alliance include: shared aircraft hubs (main airports of operation), assisting with passenger transfers, reducing costs of catering, ground staff, and operating systems, as well as increased profits by making it easier for passengers to access premium facilities like lounges.
Most airlines started off being run by governments, in part as a way of providing a pool of pilots who could be transferred to military use in a time of war as well as boosting national aircraft production. This has meant that many of the national airlines still have something like a golden share owned by the government who can turn down any takeover of the business.
Because there is a political dimension to it. Finnair is going to have the advantage in Finland, Lufthansa in Germany and British Airways in UK. Every country likes to boost their own domestic players, it’s not entirely free market.
Also the domestic customers, their is brand recognition of “our” airline vs everyone else’s. In US, given a equal choise between American Airlines or Air China, which one are americans going to pick?
There is lots of regulation and state ownership recently and today.
An example is the US foreign ownership is limed to 25% of an airline.
There is a lot of regulation about who is allowed to fly to which country and usually, you can fly from the country where the airline is incorporated to another country but not between two other countries. So a UK airline can fly UK to US but not US to Mexico
Air France, Lufthansa, British Airways etc state owen in full into late 1980-1990. Emirates, Aeroflot, Turkish Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines, and a lot of others are examples of fully or partially government-owned.
You start to see airlines that operate in multiple countries in Europe because of EU regulations. It is Air France–KLM today so the French and Dutch former state airlines are merged. Lufthansa has airlines in multiple European countries too.
Ryan Air grew large after the 1997 deregulation of EU.
So operating airlines with subsidiaries globally is practically impossible because of regulation, and where you can operate multinational like in the EU large national airlines already exited
How many “global” *anything* companies are there???
Fun fact: there are a TON of “local” airlines that are run by some international conglomerate.
So that exists.
Beyond that, there is regulatory. Nations take air security seriously so united might not want to deal with the hassle of landing in Kazakhstan. Also why would they? How many people fly from the US to Kazakhstan?
So there are two drivers
Regulatory
Demand
Anything else is a distillation of the above
Most countries prohibit foreign companies from operating domestic flights. If you can’t run domestic flights then you can’t take people from the major international airport to their city.
America and Europe has different rules. So for example pilots trained and licensed in US cannot fly inside of Europe and wise versa. (except is when they just land here and leave.)
The “Star Alliance” comes pretty close with airlines from various countries participating in a kind of “joint venture” where passengers can benefit throughout the Alliance.
I’m not sure I understand the question, really. Because many airlines are “international” with offices and presences in airports in various countries.
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