Vh-fts all you have said is correct. How decisions are made at virgin...no one knows. But they never seem to be the right decisions.
There are crews based in Brisbane who commute to Sydney and Canberra. A few frames in Brisbane with flights to Moranbah and Rockhampton would have saved the crews a lot of pain and heartache and would have saved the company money.
However it seems virgin simply want to torment the ATR crews as much as possible. Abuse them until they decide to leave seems to be their game plan...must be a result of the virgin decision making strategy