Radial Alliances and Virtual Airlines. Reshaping the partnership model in a new world

The constraints of national ownership requirements and a deep rooted preference for protectionism to promote national flag carrier interests have for decades moulded the ungainly shape of an inefficient and largely unsustainable airline industry. It is a model designed for the conditions of post-war 1945, yet it has somehow survived for 70 years with only modest changes.

That it has been perpetuated for so long is the product of the network of bilateral agreements that, like a cobweb produced by hundreds of spiders, is beyond the power of one or two willing parties to change.

The meticulous construction of this unwieldy but impenetrable fabric over decades has effectively meant that individual states cannot change it. The only solution was through multilateral agreement and the few modest attempts at that have invariably resulted in failure.