Sorry, Bealine, but there is one major flaw in your comparisons.
Come what may, you are obliged to be a customer of your local council etc and so they can be fairly casual about their pay scales and their costs knowing this.
No one has to be a customer of BA however, and if they pay their employees whatever they thing they are worth the ticket price will be so high that no one will buy them. You will then have an even bigger problem when you get laid off.
There is a lot of competition out there with companies who's pay scales are far worse than yours. Think on that for a while!