What is in a name? In air travel, not much: the airline you buy your ticket from may not be the one you fly with. But “code-sharing” is only the beginning. The European Union has begun investigating airlines’ plans to collaborate on schedules and prices for transatlantic routes. Neelie Kroes, the competition commissioner, fears they may collaborate to an excess. But she is right to look for possible consumer benefits from the plans. Such is the sorry state of international air regulation that cartels may be the lesser evil.

Once upon a time, people cared about airlines’ identities. A self-respecting country needed an anthem, a flag and a flag carrier. This attitude was enshrined in the 1944 Chicago Convention, a monument to 20th-century protectionism that, sadly, is still in force. Its inaptly named “freedoms of the air” enforce a bilateral system largely restricting traffic to carriers “substantially owned and effectively controlled” by countries between which travel takes place. The result is national ownership laws for airlines. In the US foreigners may own at most 25 per cent of airlines’ voting stock.