ASB?: Kill your national carrier

The topic sound nasty yes, but the idea is to kill your money-losing national airline of choice.

The national airline you pick must already be uncompetitive and money-losing require large amount of state subsidising before POD. Bonus point if private competitors, overseas and domestics, are swampig the airline of the market. Probably reach the point that it will never make profit again for the next ten or twenty years.

Find a way to overcome union resistance, political, and national pride and make cold, hard business logics win the day.
 
Hmmmmm
Well if the Russians had missiles to kill supercarriers, the Charles de Gaulle probably doesn't stand a chance. So... WWIII works fine.
 

Devvy

Donor
Does that basically describe PanAm, which was de facto the unofficial national carrier of the US?

(Except for the subsidies)
 
Killing Air France in the 80's or 90's wouldn't be too hard. Or if KLM never went to the rescue (killing two national carriers with one stone - France and Netherlands)

(Ninja'd two posts above)
Killing the Charles de Gaulle ? a little harder. Maybe the Hezzbollah send an ASM straight into the nuclear reactor during the 2006 war with Israel.
 

SsgtC

Banned
What about Emirates? They get massive subsidies (despite claims to the contrary). Remove those and they crumble. It also has the effect of killing the A380 with under 100 examples produced
 
South African Airways may collapse this year if the ANC Government withdraws subsidies, which may happen, as it’s seen as a middle class subsidy.
 
My first thought was that this was going to be about internet service providers. Then aircraft carriers. But it's actually about airlines.

Imagine if the Royal Navy decided to save money on its telephone bill by using the guns of HMS Belfast to demolish BT HQ, which is just outside St Paul's. HMS Belfast's guns have the range and the power. The collateral damage would be tremendous but the Royal Navy isn't sentimental. That eliminates BT, our national telecoms carrier.

BA becomes nervous that the RAF and Fleet Air Arm are going to offer passenger services, so they modify Concorde into a supersonic bomber and rejig their 747s to carry Minuteman nuclear missiles, which was tried experimentally with the C-5 Galaxy by the Americans. Don't ask me how BA manages to do all of this. They're the world's favourite airline, they'll find a way. Their priority targets are HMS Hermes and HMS Ark Royal, both of which are sunk. That eliminates two more of our national carriers. I'm assuming this timeline takes place in the 1980s.

Unfortunately for BA they have no defence against Trident, which wipes them out with massive loss of life. And thus as a result of misunderstanding and human vanity all three of Britain's national carriers are now smoking ruins and also Michael Heseltine is now Prime Minister. This scenario is very unlikely but not impossible.

On a more serious note the easiest candidate would be Swissair, which got greedy and killed itself off. It turned out that going on a massive buying spree in a depressed market which was then hit by 9/11 was not a good idea.
 
Let the trades unions run the airline while the treasury controls the budget and the Foreign Office/State department picks the routes. That combination will kill any airline/transport company.
 
Warning
The topic sound nasty yes, but the idea is to kill your money-losing national airline of choice.

The national airline you pick must already be uncompitive and money-losing require large amount of state subsidising before POD. Bonus point if private competitors, overseas and domestics, are swampig the airline of the market. Probably reach the point that it will never make profit again for the next ten or twenty years.

Find a way to overcome union resistance, political, and national pride and make cold, hard business logics win the day.

Air Force One; he's always bragging how rich he is let his spoiled wife and daughter find another way to go shopping instead of on my dime.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Air Force One; he's always bragging how rich he is let his spoiled wife and daughter find another way to go shopping instead of on my dime.
Did you ACTUALLY pull current politics into this? American politics? The U.S. doesn't even HAVE a triple damned national carrier to begin with.

NEVER DO THIS AGAIN.
 
I won't kick an airline when it's already being beaten to the ground by its own employees, so no Air France.
I guess Spirit Airlines or Ryanair could crumble due to a crash with faulty maintenance or fatigue due to overscheduling of aircraft but they aren't national carriers.
Otherwise I'd go with Norwegian (yeah easy pick, I know), not sure if Norwegian is flag carrier for Norway or is it SAS.
If not, LOT seems a good option. Remove the subsidies for the 787s and there you go.
 
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