[aidanlister]

Because an A380 costs $432 million and you need a bunch of them to run an airline, where as a restaurant fit out is ~$1M.

You also need to maintain those planes, employ staff across multiple countries and timezones, and comply with insane amounts of legislation for every country you fly into.

Are you seriously comparing that to ... serving food?

[Legogris]

Not to mention that on top of everything else, airlines also serve food.

[mschuster91]

That's easy, contract Lufthansa LSG or Gategroup or one of the smaller (local) competitors.

[mschuster91]

You can lease airplanes, even with entire crews from pilots to stewardesses ("wet lease"). Legal compliance can be outsourced to dedicated law offices, local staff by local staff lease companies.

The biggest two issues when founding an airline are getting your hands on some money and finding a profitable set of routes. For what it's worth, it's possible to do this as a former formula1 racer (Niki Lauda / Lauda Air).

[Legogris]

I'm curious; how much experience do you have in founding, managing or running an airline? You speak as if you have first-hand knowledge.

[redis_mlc]

Most of the US "union-busting regional airlines" are as simple to start as described, since a major arranges the financing and marketing/ticket sales. Well, they existed until the "1,500 hour rule", and most ran out of pilots and are gone by now.

Or a one-plane vacation charter.

It becomes much more complicated as the number of bases and planes multiply.

And if you get sloppy or unlucky, one or two crashes is enough to end even national carriers like Malaysia Airlines, regardless of who is at fault.

There are clever airline founders who serially start multiple successful airlines, so there is some mgmt. talent involved.

Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.