I can't imagine a better job to pay good money for than one involving things like the ticketing process an Airline has at the airport - a job description including things like "load, unload, and transport mail, luggage, and freight" (remember the recent Alaska incident); de-ice & anti-ice application; "perform air-start and ground power unit functions when necessary"; and... "ensuring the Captain is aware of any hazardous materials loaded on the aircraft and proper paperwork is completed..."
OK, so how much would you pay someone to do this job. Well. Frontier recently ran an ad in which the hourly rate is, wait for it, $10.16 an hour.
This is as much a marketing as a business problem. If you are going to put people in critical customer-facing roles, you need to pay them accordingly. And lets cut the crap about how strained the Airlines are these days - United, which continues to cut staff and their pay, managed to pay it's executives $19 million in bonuses in a quarter where they lost $277 million.
If these airlines want to grow, of which a key element will be stand-out customer service, they need to pay to play.
And Oh, I'm definitely not flying Frontier.
