Colonel Klink: You forgot to mention one key point about Southwest Airlines, and it is not just a coincidence.
Southwest Airlines has been heavily unionized for many years. Many US Pprune members would rather not advertise this fact, or hope that others don't discover this basic point. In-house or not, it is a glaring fact. Get your cheap Walgreen's sunglasses out of your flightbag.
Their founder, Herb Kelleher, created a company which values its staff very highly, based upon everything I've read about it.
Let's make a "compare and contrast [school report]". Managements can't simply pulverize unions, as happened at Continental in '83 by abusing US Banktruptcy code and declaring Chapter 11, in order to destroy their contracts, and expect success. IF a company's leaders respects its employees, it will find a way to settle a contract with its various unions-not quibble for two or three years.
But the actual goal is, very often, to UPSTREAM/'STEAL' the airline's operating cash, or simply boost overnight the price per share of common or preferred stock, in order for the insiders to make a quick kill-these common motivations and manipulations can NOT be OVEREMPHASIZED, and it happened at the late TWA; since when did Wall Street care about what happens with the staff/employees? Continental's morale reached rock-bottom at one time-why were they not a huge success? If you despise your staff, you indirectly despise your revenue passengers.
For example, trying to "nickel and dime" the entire operation, in olden days, telling employees to keep their mouths shut about improvements to the operation never created a winning, long-term success, did it? A few such airlines achieved very good debt/equity ratios, but morale and team spirit (if it existed) was not healthy. Not when any employee was encouraged to "write-up" colleages, turn in a totally covert, negative report, in case of any disagreement. Let's not name that airline. Their CEO's abuse was the primary cause of the dissolution of the Mutual Aid Pact.
But in the US, many investors care nothing about the long-term. Apparently, neither do many Boards of Directors.