You have got to be kidding me.
I have never heard such utter bo**ocks spouted on this site.
Emerald never "thrived" it lurched from disaster to disaster relying solely on the good will of the crews and other staff.
The day to day management was extremely poor. I have never seen such demoralised people as the poor sods in Ops when something went slightly wrong and they were threatened, bullied and generally treated like dirt.
To say the place was amateurish would be the understatement of the century. The CAA should have shut the place down years before they did. It simply wasn't good enough for an airline in the UK. The incidents that were swept under the carpet, the merry go round of unservicable parts amongst the fleets, no parts, lies about dispensations from the CAA that mysteriously disappeared when they were challenged, slowness in paying expenses, threats to crews over safety issues, constant calls to ask for paperwork to be "altered", total disregard for the well being of crews over issues such as fatigue.
Need I go on. It wasn't an airline, but a circus and MOB was the ring master.
The CAA did their job, it wasn't their fault the company couldn't meet it's obligations.