Good on you, Prickly, for clarifying your comment. It was far from obvious that it was generic and I'd doubt many read it as other than a specific response to a specific question.
Yes, the current airline is in fine shape, but not as a result of the misfits and mercenaries who joined in '88 following a major industrial upheaval which saw the sacking of just about the entire pilot group employed there at the time.
The current good status of the airline can be traced back to the newer group of pilots there in '96 who, with the encouragement of the then Nauruan government and the establishment of the Nauru Air Corporation, undertook getting an Australian AOC. The rag-tag group who arrived in '88 had long gone by then.