The pricing of airline tickets is ridiculously byzantine and obtuse, but I think you may mis-understand the pricing model.
The price you paid for your tickets may well be at or below actual costs. Low fare airlines price a small percentage of their tickets below cost, which gives them headline pricing for advertising to pull the other suckers in. The majority of tickets on any given flight are sold for considerably more than this.
The ridiculous price charged to change a name on a ticket is designed not to generate revenue, but to prevent customers doing what you are doing. It is designed to make it cost prohibitive..they don't seriously think anyone will pay it.
If they did not do it, all the low cost tickets would simply be bought by agents and subsequently sold on, for much higher prices later. The agents would be profitable, as they would charge a premium which covers the name change fee. This happened a lot in the early days of Ryanair, but was stopped when Ryanair inserted new terms which banned the practice.
I am not defending the pricing structures of these airlines... they are designed to mislead the consumer and far from transparent... but I hope it at least provides an explanation.
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