Interesting debate to which I would like to contribute only one observation, from having a lot of exposure to USA ,UK, France, Germany (lived and worked many years in each one of them, citizen of two of them): USA is ignorant about the rest of the world, UK knows about it but keeps a puzzled look and some distance to it, France thinks very much in stereotypes on things like "the Anglo-Saxon model" (and others), Germany knows about the rest of the world but thinks of its own model as one of only a few successful ones (the only other country which is not looked down upon is the USA).

It gets problematic when rulers with these attitudes/behaviours are in power: Bush in the US (no idea about the rest of the world), Cameron in the UK ("we don't want to have anything to do with them"), most of the left political spectrum in France (wich stereotype views of economic exploitation in Anglo-Saxon countries and China; Montebourg, albeit luckily not that powerful, is a perfect example of such an incarnation), Steinbrueck in Germany (if everybody did like Germany there wouldn't be any problems and I warn them to better be like Germany otherwise I'll crush them).

I am not certain though whether the inability to challenge itself that inhibits most of AF is only due to the traits described. Confronted with customer suggestions, complaints and comparisons with other competitors the typical reaction of AF (and its apologists) is to explain why something cannot work or to dismiss the best practice by pointing out that elsewhere it is even worse. That may stem from an attitude where customers aren't thought of as rational actors that make informed choices but that in fact they are "users" (for non-French speakers: the term "usager" is still in use for instance for the national railway system or public transport). Not thinking of passengers as customers but of users of something that is in place and is to be taken or left the way it is explains a lot.

(Is my reference towards AF on-topic or off-topic in this off-topic thread that was created to keep the AF topic on-topic? )