My own view of why Dixon was looking bad is that he has realised that the little band of narcissists he hired has royally stuffed it, and that the current American financial hurricane is going to have fallout. This will perhaps negate his cunning plan to maximise QF's share price at the time that his options convert.
My view of course is that he has gutted the company to produce short term gains and the damage will not be apparent until after he has left - a common tactic which better Boards have recognised and dealt with. Why do I say this? Because if you read enough of Pprune you will see a plethora of posts by QF people criticising short term thinking resulting in stupid and costly decisions, many to do with outsourcing and deliberately abusing their staff (how would You like to be called a dinosaur, part of a legacy airline?).
The trouble is that the American financial storm is going to raise the cost of borrowing, reduce loads and revenues, and make certain operations, like outsourcing to China, more risky - and Qantas, thanks to Dixon and the Board, seems to have accepted a higher level of risk (major purchases of new types for example, radical restructuring of engineering etc.) than I would personally consider prudent.
If I was planning for whats coming, I would be trying to reduce gearing, have a locally (and well) maintained fleet and be running a consolidated company (no Jetstar Asia etc.) with a very lean management team and a dedicated staff (who might forgo pay increases in an "emergency").
This Qantas is a long way from doing, in fact they have done the reverse in my opinion, and it's just dawned on Dixon that Americas woes might be his undoing.