lower costs due to low wages? I think not.
If you take each crew member's salary, divide by the number of flight legs flown each year, you find that it's usually in the realm of NOTHING per flight.
Here's an example...
Let's say one is a very highly paid training captain for the highest paying airline, and has a salary of 250,000 per year.
That captain flies 2 legs a day (intercontinental), 6 days a week, 3 weeks a months, 10 months a year (maybe more, but for now...), that's 360 legs a year.
250,000 divided by 360 legs is $694 per leg. With 300 passengers, that's $2.31 per passenger per leg.
The flight cost that passenger at least $600, so 2.31 is 0.3% of the cost of the ticket. Sure, there are 2 legs, so it's 0.6% for the captain. And there are more crew members... the co-pilot, stewards (plus ground support, but the numbers for ground support are harder to demonstrate here, but you'll get the point), so if the co-pilot makes 200,000 10 cabin crew each make 30,000, that's an additional 500,000, or another 1.2% of the cost of the ticket...
so the total for the salaries is a whopping 1.8% of the cost of the ticket.
reducing salaries does not affect profits much at all... it's a ploy by the airlines...
The real cost of flying is not even the fuel... (I can do the maths for you on this also, if needed), it's the cost of acquisition / use of the aeroplane itself.
The aeroplane cost is usually about 60-70% of the cost of a flight.
The reason a 'low cost' airline can charge so much less is because they are using aeroplanes that are 5-10 years older than other airlines, which lowers the cost significantly. Just like buying a used car instead of a new car...