Bearpit
I agree but if you buy an ailing airline you get access to their bookings and while probably not that substantial you can also email every single person who ever flew with them and do a seamless transition with aircraft handed back to the lease company.
Additionally in the case of Ryanair as they are in the longer term market for new planes then having some A319/320's to fool around with ensure Boeing play ball on price especially when Ryanair engineers are making the right noises about how wonderful the airbus products are everytime a Boeing rep is visiting.