m500dpp you hit the nail on the head in your original post. You fly in machines that cost $100 million to buy, which are subject to the most stringent ongoing safety regulatory oversight, which are flown by the most highly-trained professionals, short of brain or heart surgeons, you will ever come across. You will take off and land at a facility the size and complexity of a small city.
And you expect to do it for £0.01 before taxes. Now tell me that makes economic sense. The whole LoCo model is built on sand.
That is not to say that LoCo airline 'A' doesn't have a business model that successfully takes care of all these considerations but you have to look beyond and behind the basic operating economics to see how they do it.