Originally Posted by
RudderTrimZero
Secondly, BA's employees are mostly from the UK, a Western European country where living costs are high and therefore salaries need to be commensurate with this. Ryanair and Wizz mostly hire cheap labour from Eastern Europe. Those airlines can therefore offer cheaper fares on the same routes. The legacy carriers have to (on some routes) compete with this. Big Europe allows these companies to take advantage of this. It is not a level playing field unfortunately, but it makes a lot of business men with friends in politics very wealthy. The US is a similar land mass size to Europe but it is one country with (broadly speaking) identical hiring and labour laws. Salaries from one state to the next are also near identical.
I don't think it's much to do with "Big Europe" or enriching businessmen. It's the free market responding to a globalised and easily relocated workforce. Can an expensive Western Europe based pilot add more value to the business than one who's located somewhere cheaper to live? If not, makes sense to outsource. Leads to cheaper fares and more people being able to enjoy air travel.
You're 180 out, in Europe we have a level-ish playing field, in the US they have protectionism.