Mister Angry:
What you will probably find is that the management and office staff have finished for 2 weeks over christmas, whilst on the shop floor engineers will be busting a gut to try and get the aircraft out before christmas in the vain hope of getting a day off during the holidays, of course they are now trying to do this without any back up from planning, tech services etc.
This is what happened every christmas for the 10 years I worked there anyway, and now as a customer I can confirm this as our CMG contract support officer told me yesterday that he will be off until the 8th JAN.
ps. Was it MAN, or STN you were talking to?