Why are airline tickets so expensive?

If you are looking for logic in airline fares, forget it. The airline fare needs to cover fuel, the cost of the aircraft, crew salaries, landing costs, administrative costs, airport rent, the cost of ground equipment, the cost of other airline employees, and all of the other costs associated with doing business including taxes, and even the cost of administering the company's stock and any benefits to employees.

Revenue taking in by air fares, mail and air freight is what pays for all of the company's costs.

I worked as a Customer Service Agent for United for 22 years, and selling tickets was part of my job, so I saw a lot of tickets. The underlying principle that I saw since deregulation was expect anything.
At one time UA had a fare from LAX and SFO to NYC that required a connection in CLE that was about $200. At that time the fare from CLE to LGA was $108! There were instances when people flew into CLE and wanted to get a refund on the CLE-LGA unused ticket, and I had to charge them an addition $150 or so. At one time when I worked in MCI, an airline had a fare from MCI to ORD of $0.49. Yes, less than 1/2 a dollar. It was a promotional fare, but still devoid of logic.

Here is an example for you. An airline figures that its administrative cost per passenger is $40. The flight is 2 hours, in an aircraft that costs $70,000,000 and whose flight cost per hour is $8000, which includes crew and fuel costs. The aircraft seats 200 people in a one-class configuration, and the landing fee for the destination airport is $1000. The fares need to cover costs of $3000 at the origin and destination airport. The aircraft purchase cost is booked out to $1000 per flight hour. What do you think the air fare should be?

Sorry, but you are wrong! Remember when I wrote that logic is not a part of figuring fares? Look for fares for two-hour trips and see what they are, and you will see what I mean.