Winglets,
You make my point for me. A perfect example of the actual bad management that sped the demise. If KD had been allowed to run their own show, no doubt it would have gone smoother. Alternatively if the CRJ had been crewed and operated by AN, it would have worked. Deciding to have you crew it but by a process of suddenly being "Ansettised" was a recipe for disaster!
As to the operations actual viability, putting a smaller aircraft into an established market was obviously going to mean good load factors initially, until the SLF got tired of getting into the "Little Plane" whilst watching the red tailed 737 or 767 take off in front of them. It had other problems too. I once paxed next to a senior exec from freight who was on a mercy dash to try and save a major account. She said we had lost virtually our entire same day freight business out of Tassie as the CRJ couldn't carry it, and entire accounts were in jeopardy as companies wanted to do all there freight with one company. Remember, we were carrying "High Value Passengers" in a CRJ during the day, and then sending empty 767s to carry hold freight during the night!
As to the Kap, right to the end, SQ was publicly committing to taking 80-100% of AN, providing it could also have 1/2 of ANZ, or alternately if Big Dick hadn't torn up the cheque. Your right that as a business it was a basket case, for all the reasons stated, and yes Zer Pedar would be top of the list of vandals. But strategically, think what they would have had. All of An, half of ANZ, half of Virgin Atlantic (Remember this is pre Sept11) plus SQ is a pretty formidable grouping. It would have taken major surgery to turn AN around, but in the end they would have "had it all". In any case, irrelevant as it should never have come to that and history is just that.
As a foot note on the flight ops discussion, I always knew AN did things differently. Having been out in the "Big Wide World" for a while, I now see HOW differently! I find it a bit sad, therefore, when I still run into former colleagues who'll wax lyrical about how well we did things. We got the job done, but only by re-inventing the wheel over and over!