It's not just airlines. I think it is very important to understand the history of HOW we got to this point. There was a confluence of events in the 1970's that set the stage for the economic situation a significant number of industries finds themselves in:
F I N A N C I A L I Z A T I O N. An abstract game where people and widgets are traded like goods and chattel fuelled by cheap debt.
Having gone off the gold standard on August 15 1971, the scene was set for a massive credit boom, money having been untethered from the real economy. During the decade junk bonds were created by Michael Milken, leading to massively leveraged raids or management buyouts. Now the name of the game was borrow extraordinary sums to bid up a "target" of which you were only interested in a component. Once you acquired the target, flog off the bits you don't want, hopefully repaying the debt and walk away owning the Jewel in the crown for *FREE*. Cost cutting was the only game in town, and those that had talents for putting together a deal and sacking half the employees under the weight of enormous debts ended up billionaires. These billionaires had essentially found a way to extract the long term accumulated value from these businesses and grab it for themselves leaving a burn out wreckage behind for the employees and customers.
Oliver Stone captured the period perfectly with movie Wall Street. The name of the game is to make a fast buck & get out, not build something to last. Companies took it upon themselves to do this voluntarily, rather than become a target for a buy-and-breakup raider. Ironically, he featured an airline break-up play as the central plot of the movie: Bluestar Airlines.
At the same time Reagan & Thatcher came to office, and decided to break the unions, in response to the coal strikes in the UK and the
Air Traffic Controllers dispute in the US. This combined with the deregulation of Airlines in the US led to wave after wave of bankruptcy, mergers and acquisitions, sackings and massive cost cutting in the industry.
That is how managers learned to run the business, that is all they knew, how to shave costs and gain short term benefits and ended up making it a most unattractive business for front line employees who were always worried about having a job next week.
These forces combined have contributed to of the industry decline. Our's is not alone, many other industries suffered the same fate, it was just less visible to us except as a news report of job losses.
covers most of the important mechanics of how this financialization raiding got started & works. After reading this, go back and watch Wall Street to realise the genius of Oliver Stone (the book was published
after the movie, so Stone had to independently discover how the game worked to such deep depths).