I think perhaps that now is the time for OAT to really start worrying - after all, look what happened to the last school that Send Clowns sought to defend!
Let's get things in perspective:-
OAT is still (just) the best FTO in the JAA, this is solely because it has attracted the best instructors, both ground and flight.
However, the current senior management is doing its best to alienate all of its best assets. It appoints an excellent IFR Manager who makes the fatal mistake of telling it like it is. This is not what the (aviation illiterate) senior management wants to hear and so said IFR Manager is moved sideways (lawsuit pending). senior management appoint an only slightly less competent IFR Manager who quickly realises that everything his predecessor warned of was, in fact, true. IFR Manager (2) then makes the same fatal mistake of revealing this fact to senior management - the result (not surprisingly) is that IFR Manager (2) gets the boot (decides that, for the good of his family.....etc.)
So, now we have the situation where IFR training at OAT is being run by a Head of Training and VFR Manager, neither of whom hold a valid IR - and this is supposed to be the premier FTO????
At this point the CAA arrive ( for what they are worth). At the annual inspection, OAT's approval is renewed, but only for three months. Marigold passes this off as due to 'administrative problems'. My spies tell me, however, that the main criticism was that OAT suffered from 'a fundamental breakdown of supervision' (i.e. The management were crap!).
Result - all OAT instructors with any competence are actively seeking employment elsewhere. Of course, now is not a good time but, nevertheless, many are finding decent jobs. OAT is surviving on the reputation of a workforce that is rapidly disappearing and it is only a matter of time before the industry realises that it is paying top dollar for a second rate product. Thereafter BBA, whose core business is FBO and jet maintenance, will quickly realise that OAT is nothing more than a useless drain on its resources and will pull the plug.
What WWW, and others, fail to realise is that BBA, unlike BAe, has no inherrent interest in flight training. Their purchase of CSE Aviation had everything to do with CSE Sales and Engineering and nothing at all to do with OAT. One has only to look at the way Kidlington is being developed to understand the priorities of BBA - and it ain't flight training!!