I think it is a great idea to try to find out how to run an airline so that it is successful as a business and the employees are happy at their job.
Unfortunately, no one on earth appears to know how to do it. And it is not like there is any shortage of people trying to figure out how, which one can see by regularly reading journals such as The Economist. Air travel is a notoriously cyclical business, where what worked five years ago no longer does. In other words, there is no obvious business model that is also realistic.
I think blaming greed and incompetence of executives is the wrong approach. Total executive compensation is trivial in comparison with the routine employee costs of your average large airline, so if one paid executives the same as pilots it wouldn't make much difference at all to the business model and the sinking airline would still drown. And on the other hand if you find that rare genius who can actually make your airline profitable in the long run with happy contented employees, you might as well pay himher what heshe wants because it is only a blip and your business is successful. I understand that this is the usual justification for high executive compensation but that does not make it any the less true.
One of the main reasons Southwest appears to be doing so well is that they hedged their fuel costs. It is smart but it is also time-limited and also not everyone can do it. One of the other reasons is that Kelleher was smart enough to avoid much of the legacy business structure that handtied other airlines when it came to adjusting to the cycles, and he was there first. You know, like Ryanair, that airline for which I hear every pilot would give hisher hind teeth to work...
PBL