A Case Against National Airlines

Does every country still need a national airline? It’s a question I’ve been asking for the past couple of months to airline executives, government officials, and consultants. For the most part, the consensus is that as more countries adopt Open Skies agreements and open their borders with neighbors, each country no longer needs its own airline, particularly loss-making ones supported by governments. I spoke with some colorful characters for the story, but none as quotable as Antonis Simigdalas, who founded Aegean Airlines in Greece two decades ago, effectively putting the decades-old national airline out of business. He's a free-market guy to the core. “If the choice was whether I wanted to have a national airline and pay a shitload of taxpayer money just to maintain the flag on airplanes, compared to having someone else come and fill the void, I’d choose someone else,” Simigdalas said. “If nations want their flags to be carri