but if you sincerely believe that the Company was "hours away from closing the doors", then you fell hook, line and sinker for the spin.
Or it could just be that I know more about it than you do. I didn't just pick that up in the crew room, you know.
Sadly I can't offer you proof without compromising myself, but suffice it to say that I was commanding the flight that took the management team to the meeting, and I was later told by two directors what had happened. They told me because of a project I was involved in at the time, that involved knowing a bit more than others did. More than that, I can't say! Of course it's up to you what you believe.
Your rationale for telling crews that they had nearly been out of a job, is complete nonsense. There has been a desire to reduce disruption for years, but it required a great deal of investment in infrastructure, which simply wasn't possible. The money had to go on other things. To say that we were charging a lot and running full is also overly simplistic - in fact, our yields weren't that good for the fares we were charging, and our costs were very high. For example, on the EDI-LCY route, when we had the 146 on it, a large proportion of our monthly pax load was Royal Bank of Scotland employees... but the RBS had negotiated a corporate rate, which was a lot lower than the fares that you were suggesting, whilst still providing a full Business Class service. That was what eventually killed that route (well, one of the things, the other was the money we got from ScotAirways).
If we had been doing as well as you suggest, we would never have gone LoCo, there would have been no need. You don't change the entire commercial structure of an airline unless you absolutely have to.
As far as the relationship with the Walker family goes, they do indeed have very deep pockets, but they had also been swallowing losses for years. As soon as Jack died, the will to continue funding those losses dried up, and it was precisely that refusal to continue funding losses that brought about the crisis that we are talking about. It was also the reason for the repeated attempts to get to a flotation. Since then, the company has been diligent in paying the Walker Trust back the money they have lent us, as soon as we possibly could. As I understand it, the relationship is pretty good now.