Southwest keeps costs low where it counts, gates and airports, but pays
their employees well and keeps their planes at the top of the industry. As
you may or may not know, they have never had a crash and the only incident
was just that, an incident. jetBlue does the same. Ryanair has low costs as
well, but their revenue keeps growing, even when they offer seats for 2 euros
(as I paid). jetBlue, in fact, has grown so fast that I think they will set
a record next year when they qualify to be a major carrier (over 1 billion US
in revenue).
Not to come across as a jerk, since I know you guys at QF do a good job
of keeping that airline in the black, but the low fare carriers do a good job
of keeping costs down and yields up. Southwest makes their huge profits on
load factors under 70%, while the others have loads near 90%