Companies pay a lot of money for
PR exposure.
Either of the other airlines could have bought at least a local, if not national, 'product/brand placement' by selling a heavily subsidised or even giving free seats - what is the real cost?
FF2 made that point and s/he is spot on.
Unfortunately, most airlines seem to lack the commercial ability to harvest such opportunities and the comments of some from the industry here demonstrate a typical 'cost' rather than 'opportunity' based pattern of thinking.
Avman - great point about Ryanair
PR.