Mr. Meldrew is only wrong on the timescale, I reckon it'll take probably 8-10 years for the destruction of the UK IT airlines. I work for your main competitor and reckon we will be in a similar position in about 5 years. Our management has already made veiled threats about a Turkish Airline, this year we have 3 jets flying company callsigns with company C-Crew at our UK bases, but are Lithuanian and Spanish owned a/c and foreign flight crewed. Ops and Crewing? Go vist HQ, its a ghost-town as almost everone has been let go. The latest wheeze is to combine the the Uk base managers with the downroute base managers, half the people twice the workload. Its relentless and this winter will almost certainly see a further contraction of the UK airline( 3 330's already going) more airframes to go is rumored.
Thompson, like us, are great operations but the world is changing, our (perceived) well feathered jobs will be the last of their kind and the future is without doubt in the hands of FR an EZ. It might be a cr#p outlook, but at least they don't have to worry about their employer going under every week.