The shareholders and board kept the old CEO around for a long...

The shareholders and board kept the old CEO around for a long time and approved his decisions. It created the disaster that they are in. VA lease half of their fleet. It will lose economies of scale and its value proposition is going to be poor.

Monopolies can be managed. You can give QF competition, but it doesn't have to come from VA.

Bailouts do come with conditions. Unfortunately, the airline and tourism industry won't be rebounding for sometime. Hence the reluctance by the Government. It'll have to wear VA's bad historic decisions, and keep paying SRB to keep using the Virgin name.

Tiger was a disaster and I would say Virgin Blue was itself starting to become less profitable before JB came onboard.

Let it go into Administration and see what is actually salvageable.