It would be nice to have a full merger of airlines. If i own 2 airlines i should be able to merge the airline with an other airline
Also Splitting airlines would be nice. Say i have a large airline but i would like to move all planes doing regional to a new regional airline. So moving all planes and staff to a new airline. This would be nice on the older worlds and bigger airlines would be very happy with this feature.
Airlines on the Stock exchange need to be at least 95% in hands of the airline that wants to merge. The other 5% of the stockholders are bought out by the main stock holder at the current price.
An airline merger would be the absolute worst nightmare for the database to process I could imagine of. It would only work if airline A would absorb all assets from airline B, re-employ all of its staff (with airline A's wages), take over all flight numbers (with guarantee of massive number overlapping, what to do here?), stations (massive staff redundancy), seat configs, service profiles (overlaps here again), interlining (more redundant staff), leasing and ground service contracts. I may have forgotten some points. I wouldn't say it's impossible, but this would be far from an automated and simple process.
Splitting would be easier to be done, I think. The Asset Management tool provides the basics already. To transfer fully equipped aircraft with flight plans and crew it would require an automated copy of the required stations, flight numbers, seat and service configs if necessary, free transfer of pilots and flight attendants and the refresh of leasing contracts towards the new aircraft lessor if applicable.
What we need is an ability to easily transfer assets from one airline to another if both are unlisted: money, crew, planes with seating arrangements (including leased planes, you should be able to transfer the leasing contract to a sub while keeping the seats installed), flight plans, etc. Also an ability to unlist an airline if you own 100% of the shares.
This would make the need to split/merge redundant as you could just transfer assets and liquidate, or just create a sub and transfer assets. I'm guessing this would be quite easier to code than a system to merge/split an airline.