In plain terms there is a culture of poor staff management which has left any long term goals unachievable due to the lack of experienced skilled staff who have already looked for greener pastures. The airframes are old, yes of course, but with proper resources can be perfectly serviceable. The only thing preventing a smoking hole as you put it, is the crew who identify something as being unsafe and therefore call in an engineer, who unfortunately, is often not available. To take this to its ultimate point, if you end up with poor quality staff who won't call an engineer who is not available anyway...
Maybe it's time to start thinking about how to keep staff. Just an idea for the boardroom. Go on why not? Money???