No, I'll let someone else have a go, you're living in a dream world, your detailed statements do not reflect the commercial and competitve reality. In short, you don't know the difference between apples and pears in a marketplace.
Ditto for United buying American
Hold on, you still have not explained (as well as other posters) why UA-AA would a "frightening prospect for competition" despite the fact that (as I have shown) that it would not be the case
Here is the statement (again) stating why I am saying my point about this:
Firstly UA has little presense in the South-East of America, they also have a problem in relation to routes to Latin America and they could do with more slots at LHR
AAs biggest problem is that they are lacking in the Pacific and the face they (and UA) are having to deal with a fragmented makrets in Chicago, LA and NYC
So if UA and AA merged, those problems would be solved, UA would gain AAs MIA hub, which is pretty profitable and serves emerging markets in Latin-America, AA also has a lot of slots/routes at LHR, which would be very useful to UA and UA-AA would be able to consolodate the fragmented markets in NYC, LA and Chicago. UA would also gain AA's profitable hub at DFW
Lastly, their fleets are fairly similar, both are more or less the same age and both are a lot of fleet types (A320, 737, 757, 767, 777)
As for anti-Trust, well it would be only be a small problem, which I would break it down:
Lets look at the domestic market, if AA and UA merged the combined airline would only hold 27.1% of the US Domestic Market, hardly a monopoly, remember Southwest/Air Tran hold 26% and Delta nearly 19%
AA and UA share only 3 hubs, they are LAX, ORD and NYC (in this case JFK and EWR), UA-AA would hold 40% of the NYC markets (All Airports in NYC) and LAX (not counting other airports in LA area), so it means that both markets will still have a lot of competition
ORD would become a fortress hub like UAs hubs in EWR and IAH and AAs hub in MIA and DFW, in the case of ORD, it will face strong competion from Chicago's other main airport MDW in the form of Southwest (who hold a near 90% market share at that airport)
As for International routes, Trans Pacific and Trans Atlantic routes would still face a lot of competition from Delta and its partners in ST or in the case of US-Africa fall behind them
So really the competition issues are not enough prevent a UA-AA merger
If you (or others) still think there are competition issues with a AA-UA merger after reading this, then I am more than happy to hear it (along with anything you or others disagree who disagree with my statement
Virgin will never acquire BA. Regardless of who's funding it, it will NEVER pass the regulatory hurdles.
All the routes that both BA and VS compete on also have competition from at least 1 other airline (bar LHR-ACC and that is only because Ghana International went bust), my first option however would prevent VS and BA competing on the same routes (which would go around that competition issue)
Also a combined BA/VS/OW would hold still hold a smaller proportion of slots then lets say AF/KL/ST at AMS and CDG and LH/*A at FRA and MUC
So they do charter work, so what! Many carriers do, including full service ones. It can be a nice little earner. Don't know about VS, but BA do, and BD did, charter work.
SS, like VS, isn't in an alliance, UIX is in Skyteam.
The case is not made: France and Spain can and do sustain more than one full-service carrier each.
My point is that Corsair's main business (unlike BA/VS/AF for example) is charter and full-service scheduled flights are basicly "on the side" in other worlds it is like French equivalent of Thomson, Air Europa business puts charter and scheduled on equal terms, so it is a "hybrid carrier" like Monarch (which like UIX is owned by a travel operator)
BA and VS charter work is "on the side" its main business is still operating full-service scheduled flights (although VS has close ties with travel operator Virgin Holidays)
So my case stands that pretty much none of Europe's nations can sustain any more than 1 full-service carrier, apart from Germany (due to the cold war) and Britain