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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There are lots of reasons. Mostly it’s because every country likes having their own airlines, and they don’t really trust foreign airlines quite as much as their own. A lot of them do own foreign airlines, or at least part of them, but they keep the names because that’s what people like. Swiss people who fly on Swiss International might not like flying on Lufthansa, for instance, even though Lufthansa owns Swiss International.
Also, there’s a bit of national security in it. In times of war, for instance, the United States could use planes from every American airline to move troops around. If other countries owned big parts of those airlines, that might not be so easy.
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