alt Hacker News> governments don't know how to mandate good corporate governance.
The correct answer to this is to break up consolidated markets with antitrust. Are there only two airframe manufacturers left? Then chop them into smaller pieces so there are more. Reduce vertical integration so that it gets easier for new entrants to compete at any given part of the supply chain without needing to duplicate the entire thing themselves. Let each of the spin offs start with a non-exclusive license to the no longer existent parent company's technology so they all have the chance to iterate on it and compete for providing it.
And don't let them buy each other again.
Problem with antitrust hammers is that once you've chopped Boeing into bits you don't end up with a competitive market with lots of new aircraft designs, you end up with a global Airbus monopoly on aircraft over 150 seats and the few surviving bits of Boeing competing to sell into its supply chain...
Airframers really aren't that vertically integrated as companies go. But it turns out the business of designing, certifying and selling an aircraft (and managing complex multinational supply chains) is hard, and airlines don't want 6 competing types of narrowbody in their fleet, they want one type of narrowbody in their fleet with an abundance of type-rated pilots, multiple maintenance options and a robust aftermarket.