I think the profitability or viability of a company doesn't need to be necessarily taken into account and certainly the ACCC, notwithstanding its lack of teeth, makes it clear that it is sided nearly entirely with consumers. And we all know consumers do not care about a company's particulars - they only care for getting a product or service at high quality for lowest cost. A ruling that mentioned or accounted for QF's possible flailing financials would likely attract scorn from both consumers and the business community. If anything, the ACCC is looking at QF's market share and seeing high figures (domestically) and would not care to see it fall more in order to facilitate cut throat competition and the implied lower airfares (i.e. "crusading a win for consumers"). Hence why Sims was likely hesitant to grant this determination (with reduced term), as "helping QF" actually doesn't really improve competition, so to speak.
Even if profitability were considered seriously in a decision, the way I see it the ACCC would likely consider QF as being one of those companies that won't fail (it can reduce, subdivide and Jetstar-ise and what not, but it won't disappear), so it will, in its wisdom, not consider that the competition will necessarily decrease; if anything, it will pride itself on much stiffer competition by allowing key inroads into the market by competitors, including Virgin. In the worst case if QF did disappear, then it's not like they have not dealt with a domestic monopoly before (a la AN collapse) and I suppose they will give themselves something to do as well as appear to be the heroes when they promote a much more liberal domestic market and incentivise new or developing airlines to fill the QF void (a la the VA revolution we have had in recent years).
