There's no need to explain. Litebulbs thinks that managers can cook the books adequately so that they can create an impression that a business is failing to scare the employees into change, then once change is secured they begin making supernormal returns. Of course managers can scare employees but they rarely scare those with a professional level of financial acumen and interest. Remember how long it took the analysts to strip away the smoke and mirrors after Virgin put out those curious 10 month financial results? About 24 hours if I remember correctly. Unfortunately large, high profile listed airlines can't really get away with cooking the books in that way as too many people have too great an interest in them. Sure, you can get a departmental manager to scare his subordinates into believing they better cut costs or be outsourced, but for a major airline entity the numbers speak for themselves. If the CEO says the company is at risk of going t*ts up in the medium term then the chances are he's sounded that message out with key institutional investors already and they agree. It's when airline CEOs say a company is definitely not going bust I start to worry.