but I don't think any airline executive could be quite as stupid as that.
I admire your sense of humour.
People want to pay less money. Those in Y want to pay less so that they have more for their holiday. Those who are actually paying for C + F want to pay less for all the usual reasons. Carriers have everybody by the short ones UNTIL there are lots of carriers and seats on offer. So they drop prices to get more punters in and have to squash them in to make some money. Once prices are down, they can be forced back up by a few measures but not many. It can take two or three years to nudge prices up by 10% and only three months of a price war to lower them again.
After all, the A380 is not going to be cheap and the airports are not going to prepare the new docking facilities for free either. The reason for buying this machine is that the carriers believe that they will get new economies of scale, in the way that they did when the 747 and then 767 came on the scene.