Okay I'll take the bait and debate the political and national interest aspects of this.
1. I haven't got the time to review the 2001 recapitalisation in great detail but from a brief look there was a $885m package involved of which $300m was preference shares, since repaid. With the benifet of hindsight after repayment of preference shares their net investment was $585m.
2. For most of the last 14 years healthy level's of dividends have been paid to the government, e.g. last years final dividend, (just one of manyover the years, including the special translated into a $92m payment to the Govt) as well as the company paying full taxation to the N.Z. government every year.
3. The company presently employs approx. 10,500 Kiwi's and I worked out the average salary is $104,000, that's nearly $1.1 billion dollars in wages and the vast majority of those employees are N.Z. residents and liable for N.Z. taxation at an average rate of somewhere around 30 cents on the dollar that's $330m in PAYE remitted to the N.Z. Govt each and every year !!
4. Lets have a look at how the airline has performed over the years. According to Craigs the average return inclusive of dividends for the last 10 years has been 12% per annum compounding. Very, very few other stocks have double digit average 10 year returns. There's a little gold nugget of information I'll bet very few people realised, especially you. Despite being a cyclical industry and the last 10 year period encompassing arguably one of the most difficult periods in the companies 75 year history, (the global financial crisis), long term holders have enjoyed compound returns of 12% per annum !!
5. Notwithstanding the Government selling some of its stake down in November 2013 and getting most of its original investment back ($365m), the present value of the Govt's remaining 53% stake is a whopping $1.75 billion dollars !!!!!
6. Kiwi's enjoying domestic airfares that are ostensibly unchanged from what they were a decade ago i.e. in real inflation adjusted terms they're actually about 30% cheaper. God knows what domestic airfares would be if Etihad or some other foreign carrier dominated the market but you can bet you last dollar they wouldn't be as reasonable as they are now.
7. There's also the national interest to think about. Why would you put some other foreign governments national interests ahead of our own by selling to some other foreign owned airline who would run the airline purely in their own national interests ? Governments owning some / all of their national airline is not a new concept by any means and many governments understand the importance of protecting their own national interest...why is this concept so difficult for you to understand ?
Even leaving aside the national interest debate I believe I've shown most emphatically that the N.Z. Govt has done exceptionally well out of its investment in AIR as have other shareholders and employees who are generally very well paid. I'd call that a win all round for all Kiwi's.