In the business and indeed aviation world today there are still those who overexpand their businesses too rapidly and get caught out. In fact Richard Branson in his autobiography says that Freddie cautioned him on this very point, and Branson has indeed stuck to it. Seems Freddie finally understood the matter.
Laker was brought down by the following :
1. A ludicrous expansion of his fleet in a very short period of time, all those DC-10s then a whole lot of A300s as well.
2. Inadequate understanding of where the worthwhile revenue was going to come from to fill them all 7 days a week 12 months a year.
3. A belief that, while he was free to launch any number of commercial attacks on markets already held by other major operators, that they could/would not do any rebuttal to this or use their substantially greater experience to defend their established territory.
4. Living on borrowed money and being undercapitalised with his own funds to get through what is sometimes euphemistically called bad trading conditions but is more often writing off bad management decisions to experience.
Laker was a great entrepreneur, sure, and built up his airline well in its earlier years, but he just got out of his class.