How could the board and senior management be so incompetent if not by design ?
I have heard the same phrase mentioned in a previous post thrown around about QF before.
Aviation is a bad business and generally does not get the top talent in the management ranks. It is an industry that you get into because either you have an interest in aviation or you can't get a job anywhere else that pays more. Most of the top talent usually ends up at Merchant Banks/Finance/Stockbroking companies where the margins are fatter and there is less volatility. Some guy with a university medal or a honours degree who is first in the class isn't going to put down a career at QF as his first choice. As a result you don't necessarily get the best people for the job.
And unlike other industry people who are LAME's or Pilots don't really move onto management roles as they actually like being a pilot or lame, so this results in a disconnect between management types and the workers.
This is a very unique problem to aviation as in just about every other industry in the world people will move through the ranks from a technical discipline. In mining the engineers move through and become project managers, in finance the analysts move on into other finance roles. School teachers become principals. Yet in aviation pilots and engineers generally don't move through the ranks into management. I think this why there are so many techinical stuffups by airline management today.
On saying all that I suspect that QF management decisions over the years have been plagued by much self interest (and one could suggest corruption although that could never be proven) which hasn't really helped the cause of the airline. Not buying the 777, Jetstar's company structure, and the botched up privatisation to name a few.
News Ltd started Ansett's demise by taking all the profit's out of the airline. I suspect that QF have done the same thing with Jetstar.