Air Europe's massive expansion into high-profile scheduled services plying trunk routes between major European cities towards the end of the 1980s, the airline's huge aircraft commitments lasting well into the 1990s, and ILG's increasing reliance on profits arising from its interest in the US dollar-denominated residual values of the aircraft operated by its airline subsidiaries for the group's overall profitability from 1989 represented a high-risk strategy for an undercapitalised company. This marked a major shift from the original focus on establishing Air Europe and Intasun as a major force in the UK charter airline/package tour market as well as Air Europe's excursion into operating scheduled services on selected leisure routes only. Although ILG had justified this strategic shift by the new strategy's far greater rewards compared with the old one, some members among its senior management suspected that there was an ulterior motive to all this. It was well known among senior company insiders that several sets of exploratory talks had taken place at various times, involving ILG and British Airways, as well as ILG and American Airlines. ILG had also held similar talks with a number of other interested parties. These talks had centred on how to intensify those parties' co-operation with ILG/Air Europe, including proposals for a full-scale merger/takeover.