AY could actually have charged even more and in doing so invest in making it even better. "It may be expensive, but its great" can also work quite well, especially in premium cabins. What's another €50 on a €1000 ticket. And especially where you have a monopoly route and can charge high cost anyway. Cutting costs is not a way to grow a business IMHO, any accountant can do that, even if you have some short term "shareholder interest" gains for which there are clearly several proponents here. The intangible is hard to value.

What this forum tells me is that there are a lot of FF pax who simply want AY to be world class in terms of service, routes, brand, reputation etc. And it absolutely is not today. We can only hope and its fair enough to express your wishes and hopes.

With a monopoly we are stuck with AY for some routes, but for others I have switched to other carriers.