Its just beyond the joke.
The CAA/Andrew Haines states they were putting together contingency plans for 4.5 weeks before. To be doing that they must have had pretty big warning flags. All the while ZB management at setting up other companies, announcing they're going long haul and conducting yet another strategic review.
Really greybull wont have wanted to stump up the money last year which is why its dragged on and as nothing has improved this year the sum of its parts will have clearly tipped the balance - especially given Swaffield confirmed it wasn't/isn't insolvent.
If ZB was projecting 100 MIL loss you dont just predict that over a period of 4 weeks. Nor do you fix it over a 4 week period. I wonder how much of that relates to costs involved in changing to the max and increased lease costs vs the airbus fleet too.
You have to wonder just how uncompetitive MON was- staff taking a 30% pay cut - it benefited from better supplier terms in 2014 etc. Lots of goodwill just wasted and where did these advantages go?
It will be hugely interesting to see where the money & expenses drained out of of ZB to make it so uncompetitive - especially by way of greybull who i don't believe wont recoup their investment. They've done similar with multiple companies (m local, comet etc).
Essentially its probably been more profitable to just dump the staff and all the pension liabilities. Mantagazza's also need looking at why they sold it for a nominal amount - clearly just to offload it. Something seriously wrong in the UK where you can just offload a business and all the responsibilities knowing in all likelihood its going to go bust (BHS example).
Also i bet they weren't trying to sell it for a nominal fee last week to save the jobs and all the passengers etc. I bet EZY, Norwegian, BA etc would have bought it for a quid.
An airline needs investment especially if it needs turning around, its not a short term project of a couple of years, especially if you dont have a direction and are forced to live on a hand to mouth. Last years ATOL renewal fiasco also damaged them so it was obvious it would need additional help. Instead they've wasted the last year and come back to the conclusion that the stuff they dumped in 2014 is where they should have been focused.
The directors and greybull should be totally ashamed.