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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Generally airlines can’t be global. There are the “Freedoms of the air” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air) and most countries only allow the first 5. This means generally an airline from country A can’t fly between country B and C. Every flight must start or end in A. (There are exceptions, like in EU, airlines can fly between any countries).
Why? There is a lot of national pride in a country having airlines, so the governments tend to protect the national airlines.
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