While your point is definitely "true" I am not altogether confirmed that it is "fair". In a nutshell, with the right conditions I have absolutely no doubt that AFKL would have been able to poach almost any top candidate.

Leading one of the main world airlines should be an immensely attractive position for an ambitious and competent industry leader, and the fact that the company (or more accurately its main owner) has not been willing to do what it would take to make the job doable and attractive is, in and by itself, highly telling.

Incidentally, I am not altogether sure that a company facing as major a crisis as AFKL should rely on candidates. If they had been serious about turning AFKL around, the owners would have completely ignored the question of volunteers for the job, and instead put together a (ideally independent) search committee that would have tried to assess who was the best possible person for the job to then make the job tempting to them, and not the other way round.

But here goes, it is major French companies that we are talking about, so on that front, I can keep dreaming!