Sorry,
After having been in this industry for quite a while now, I have seen quite a few extremes happen. This is a new paradigm, UAL and the big 3 have finished their consolidations, now its the regionals turn for change. This goes back to the "pilot shortage", believe it or not, the reason isn't pertinent, pay ect, the reality is, it takes a while to "create" a pilot from scratch, even a fully qualified 121 pilot takes 4-8 weeks to transition him/her onto the seniority list. Inability to operate even one major airline grade A/C for a day is expensive, and lets face it, while pilots are expensive, its way more expensive to be short on them. This will be an exercise in cost containment, ready made pilots who are "shake and bake" ready are far less expensive than free range candidates. Read between the lines, the new COO comes from a "Future Strategies Group", your future is being determined at a conference table in ORD, or has already been determined. BH likes to think of himself as a line pilot, maybe he wasn't willing to participate in the "new" plan......