????

TWA brought 186 jets to the party, valuable landing slots at ORD/JFK/LGA/DCA, Worldspan Reservation system (which when sold netted AMR hundreds of millions of dollars) and 76 international route authorities some overlapped AA's, some did not. TWA and AA were hiring right up to the time of the merger...from actually being there at the time of the merger, I observed that there were more than enough seats to go around. Maybe I misunderstood your post, but I respectfully disagree.
If American had not bought TWA, who would have taken the 2,889 furloughes that AMR dished out to the pilot group ?? IMHO, AA pilots paid less with the merger than they would have if they had to endure the furloughes without the TWA pilots.

FF