I suspect some of the perceived delusion/optimism is that whilst it is not desirable to have large amounts of debt, it reads like Jet2 have found it relatively easy to obtain the funds to prop the bank balance up. At a consumer level, lenders are being a bit more careful about giving out money in these times, and from some non-industry related businesses I know of, this is a problem for businesses too. That it appears to have been relatively easy (oversubscribed share placings etc), it shows that there is at a fairly reasonable level of confidence in the company to move forward strongly if they can get to the other side of this. Whilst previous years profits show that it will take some time to pay back the debts, perhaps the market and lenders might view having a higher confidence in moderate returns is better than a lower confidence in record breaking returns.