You're right It's the nature of the beast. 8 years ago when Republic bought MidAtlantic we had people leaving Piedmont like crazy to go to RAH for the quick upgrade and new planes. We had no growth (and actually our airline went from about 110 planes to about 40 when you combine us and ALG) so people left to go fly the 175 for less money because it was a chance for a faster upgrade. At the time I didn't blame anyone for leaving. Some of our pilots said hell no to going to fly the 175 for less money with a worse contract and terrible benefits. Up until last year they all thought they'd made a bad choice for staying at Piedmont. Those same people that stayed 7 years as FO's are now Captains and if they chose will flow over to American probably at the end of 2016. They are getting rewarded now for sure.
I've seen how the contract carriers have low balled the WO'ed carriers in the past to gain flying. It's a never ending cycle.
Looks now like the flying has become watered down that AAG looks it might be cost effective to keep most of it's flying in house.
Sure Republic won't get shut down and of course AAG can't cover all that flying at once. The writing however might be on the wall that RAH will shrink and ENVOY, PDT and PSA will slowly continue to grow. Parker in his own words said he wanted 3 WO'ed carriers each operating close to 150 aircraft with maybe 1 or 2 contract carriers.
The question is will the carrot be nice enough to get people to come to the WO'ed carries. Right now the answer is yes because many people see the quick upgrade and a job at American as a nice option. But how long will it last??? For RAH when they started people ran there for the same thing and it lasted a good 6 years. Maybe this is the WO's 6 year window and then like you said, "the tree will be shaken again."