So, it seems that the discussion so far is more focused on a technical enforcement of the rule rather than the general concept of what should be considered acceptable vs unacceptable game play. Once that has been determined, the technicalities of enforcement become a bit more relevant.
So, conceptually, we have a general rule about money transferring between airlines being against the rules (specifically, the spirit of
fair competition within the game). When airlines are slinging cash around through pumping money into a friend's startup airline through sham plane buy/sell schemes or doing the buy junk to scrap maneuver, this creates a less fair (perhaps unfair) playing environment within a game world. The trouble with it is that there's a fine line to walk between what is considered appropriate versus not without creating a huge checklist. I would think that a decent (probably not perfect) fine line would be examining the benefit to each airline in the transaction or series of transactions. If it's a one sided transaction (like buy junk to scrap) where one airline receives an above-market benefit and the other takes an irrational loss, this would fit the criteria. This is also something where scale should be considered. 1-2 planes done as a buy junk to scrap isn't going to unfairly tilt the fairness of the game, but that fleet of 100 DC4's you're flying in the 1980's is a whole different scale.
So, let's apply that to the various types of transactions:
- Things that would be fine:
-- General plane selling within alliance/system limitations
-- General plane leasing within alliance/system limitations
-- Buy/leaseback transactions
- Things that are not fine
-- Buy junk to scrap
-- Plane laundering schemes to transfer cash (selling planes in a circular/semicircular transaction path that pumps money in to evade the you can't sell back to the same player right after buying limit)
I agree with Zobelle above - is this really such a problem? There are probably more important areas to be looking at. "If it isn't broken, don't fix it"
Quite frankly, yes, it is a problem. If the dying airline is kept alive long enough through this unfair transfer of funds, then the prevailing airline competing with them may enter a death spiral and fortunes could be reversed. It's not exactly fair to have had say, a 20 year long battle in your HQ and be winning, but then lose because you don't have rich airline friends willing to pump in billions to save you while your weaker competitor has a lifeline.
Said otherwise, this cheat is useless most of the time, slightly reduces the insane wealth of the big boys(be they in alliance or opponents), and is only useful when a very healthy company has a temporary cash problem that IRL would be solved by a decent loan. I'm not sure, therefore, that a nerf is needed. Let players make mistakes and waste their cash. For sure I wasted mine in doomed companies.
Consider it from the player being targeted by this action. It's beyond frustrating and maddening to have to deal with it - I've been on the competitor to the airline receiving this help a number of times (Hi Fred!) and have ultimately prevailed. Drawing out the death of the competitor limits what I can do (i.e. slot availability) until they are gone, so if you "give" the competition an extra few game years to live from this, they're effectively stealing my credits until I can resume expanding in that particular base. Not to mention such behavior can preclude the ability to earn particular achievements that would be otherwise attainable.
So where to go with this? Right now, these tactics are in the "grey" area of the rules and I'd like to know whether they are either allowed or disallowed rather than leaving them in the grey area. If these tactics are explicitly allowed, I believe we'll see a significant increase of this sort of behavior (as folks like myself who do not do "buy junk to scrap" because they believe its against the rules may start doing it), but if they are disallowed, there needs to be further discussion on the appropriate enforcement mechanism. Gut feel for enforcement is that once it's known it's not allowed, this would be a PM sami to report thing as there's likely not a way to enforce it systemically (as there has to be some discretion applied).