Bullwinkle,
the days of airlines consisting of a few planes, a few pilots and some engineers finished in the 1980's. I don't really like the fact that planes are now 'assets', pilots are 'systems operators' and there seems to be 10 regulations for every heartbeat, but airlines are now owned by pension funds, regulated by everyone, attacked by insane and used by the masses.
Never has there been so much competition amongst airlines. If you like your airlines thin on staff, go work for a LCC like Wow, Whizz or Ryanair.... watch your salary drop, start buying your own uniform/lunch and pay for your own ratings; they share your opinion on managers and staff. If you don't like that plan, you're working for an airline that needs to stand out from the crowd.and has to offer all the extra guff which requires people to manage the aforementioned extra guff, like FFP, customer service, catering, lounges etc etc.
I have been on both sides of the fence, and don't work for VA, so I don't really give a dingoes p1ss what goes on there, but you do sound like a cynical whinger who is probably in either the wrong airline or the wrong job.