I think d-concord has it right on the money. The internal inefficiencies and incompetencies were the primary cause of the collapse. What didn't help was that CASA was allowing them to operate with seeming impunity, when for lesser problems AN's 767 fleet was grounded. The inconsistencies of the regulator are appalling.
Wingnuts - I don't know where you get your data from but the TAA 727 operation is exceptionally unreliable. Ask the customers. Sure, when they operated they were usally pretty good - problem was that more often than not one of the 727's fell over. And in the freight industry in Australia there is simply nowhere else to put that freight. Dispatch reliability as a measure is smoke and mirrors.