This company has never made a large profit but then that was never the point. The basic premise has been that the family buy the aircraft and lease them to the airline. The airline operates them and pays a lease back to the owner. This lease amount has been paid continually long after the aircraft have been paid for. You do not become worth $5 bn without some clever business practice. This all worked well before the advent of low cost carriers and a family holiday company would buy the seats on the aircraft to keep them busy.
The company's financial affairs have always been a closely guarded secret but there are only three principal shareholders to answer to which is very unusual in this industry.
The events of recent years including the banking crisis has made financing the aircraft more difficult and the rise of low cost has also made it more difficult to fill the aircraft seats. I cannot imagine that the senior members of the family will allow the company which has made them phenomenally rich to fold but I worry about the younger generations who have always been in a family of billionaires and their commitment to the group. Perhaps they need to be taught the same lesson that Warren Buffet taught his three children when he disinherited them and they will have to earn their own money.