top9un, not sure if you're agreeing with me or not? Your two bust companies + Malev however are a case in point: none of these airlines were known in the industry for over-generous T&Cs, and yet they folded. Why?
For the same reasons all airlines fold, incompetent management decisions in the cut-throat high-overhead environment that is aviation.
Some of the airlines that treat their pilots best (LH and CX come to mind, as does Southwest in the US) are also some of the most consistently profitable, because they are (relatively) well managed.
In my carrier (legacy southeast Asian major, virtually always profitable) pilots are paid fairly well. And yet TOTAL staff costs (ie all staff included, flight/cabin crew and ground staff) average around 15-16% of our airline's costs, only just ahead of landing/parking/route expenses, and
well under half of fuel costs (over 40% of total costs!). As you can see, a simple bungling of a fuel hedging decision might have more effect on the bottom line than our pay. And while I don't know the exact portion of that 16% staff costs that goes to our pilots, considering we have something like ten or twelve thousand flight attendants and over fifteen thousand ground staff I would be surprised if it were much more than 4% of total costs.
This in an airline well-known for above-average pilot salaries.
Of course management will bang on about how they can't possibly afford to pay you any more, it's
their job to keep costs in check; as a matter of fact their bonuses are often directly proportional to how well they keep your pay under control! Don't fall for their spiel: in my previous airline, we once calculated that even if all the pilots had gone to work absolutely for free, they still would have made a loss.
Once again, good luck to the FR pilots in their fight for better T&Cs: you are only worth what you can negotiate.