Escalation
It seems to me that Q has made a mountain out of a molehill through a feedback loop of positive reinforcement using solely its own actions. This could be explained by intention or incompetence.
I start with the premise that the first significant impacts on schedule reliability and thus customers were as a result of the half a dozen grounded a/c two weeks ago.
This then impacted bookings, to the extent that yesterday's decision was seen to be justified.
The first grounding was blamed in the media on "60,000 man hours" of maintenance backlog, or 360 man months. Is this realistic for a fleet of 108 a/c? I have no idea how the minor industrial action taken by ALAEA to this point could result in such a backlog.