Airline Club

Having played V2 for a while now, it seems to me that alliances confer two bonuses that, taken together, present too much of an advantage in the game.  There is code-sharing that provides a bonus in transfer pax.  I think this bonus is fine and proper.  But the second benefit, a boost in reputation, seems overpowered.  The airlines in the top alliance currently receive a 50-point boost in reputation and this seems, well, game-breaking because it directly boosts the ability to expand by granting many extra delegates.  Since more and more delegates are required as each base is added or expanded, the differential between the number of delegates available to big versus small airlines grows to a prohibitive level.

I'm not sure of the exact numbers in the following example but it will illustrate the concept.  A small airline with a reputation of, say 120, will have (I think) 26 delegates.  If the airline has bases totalling 14 levels, that leaves 12 delegates free for negotiations.  But the same airline in a top alliance will have a reputation of 170 which confers an extra six(?) delegates for a total of 18.  This, in turn, represents a fifty percent bonus in terms of negotiations.  On top of the aforementioned pax bonus from code-sharing, I think this combination simply brings too large a benefit from participation in an alliance.

Seems to me that the pax bonus from being in an alliance is realistic and proper but does being in a real-world alliance really confer much of a bonus to an airline's reputation?  Is real-world Air France's reputation that much higher because it's part of real-world SkyTeam?  I think not.  Perhaps a modest reduction to the reputation bonus is in order.  What do you guys think?