There's another compelling reason for NOT merging airlines from different countries.
And another:
A lot of interesting discussion on the corporate structure and employment contracts, but what about the punter?
We all know that for Iberia(n peninsular), read Madrid, and for British read London, but just exactly what would a merged airline be called? Outside the industry and a few FT readers, no-one knows who the hell IAG are or what they do.
A new brand would have to be built from scratch. We accept Oneworld as an alliance, but it is not an airline, nor is there a proposal for these alliances to operate as such, apart from shared marketing / loyalty and a few promotional decals on some members' aircraft.
So we'd be back to the marketing people to dream up "Consigniair" or some other meaningless name to express the shared values of their core markets, of which there are, of course, very few.
Any suggestions?