I think it's naive to say that "airlines are doing poorly, it's because their employees are overpaid." Airlines are managed in an embarrassingly poor manner.

Think about it this way: 50 years ago, if you had a chance to invest $10,000 (without the benefit of hindsight), air travel might have seemed like just the thing. After all, it was safe, growing, profitable -- this could be your chance to get in on IBM on the ground floor! But wait ... Eastern goes belly-up. Pan-Am, TWA. Take your pick. Airlines have a long history of mis-management, and it's not because they're making their employees so ungodly rich. And it's not because they are giving away so much in frequent flyer programs.

They're just in a rut of poor business. Granted, running an airline is expensive with fuel costs, buying and maintaining planes, keeping a happy public face, and all that. The bottom line is that you can't cut corners in the airline business -- if you do, your planes crash and people die. There are too many important safety factors at stake. But the airlines haven't been creative enough, for the most part (Southwest, JetBlue), to reconcile the important public service they provide with the ability to do it profitably. They need to start looking to other places to cut the fat.

There's not any huge reason to panic over the current state of air travel, either. It's not like the airlines are all going to go out of business at the same time. The history of commercial aviation in the U.S. has been one of airlines coming and going. To stop break cycle, the industry has to re-evaluate its business model and start doing things differently from the ground-up. It's hard, there's no denying, because safety is such an important factor. But that doesn't mean it can't be done. All this bellyaching about the cost of frequent flyer programs and employees simply provides a more convenient scapegoat than addressing the real problem.