I'm not so sure I would call it easy. That was a rough process switching from the pensions to the current DC plans. UAL, for example, wrote off almost $10B in pension liability in bankruptcy, and $3.2B of that was not insured. That's three billion dollars of United employee retirement that evaporated with the flick of a pen. I think there's some historical relevance in that related to where they are now with their retirement plans.

Anyway, I've tried finding CBA's from around that time but haven't had much luck. I found the UAL CBA signed in December of 2012 shows 5-year A320 pay rates at $115/$179 (FO/CA), while the APC page for UAL shows $149/$233. Pay has clearly gone up a lot in a short time there (and other places), so I am just curious how Spirit's CBA overall compared six years ago when the legacies were losing money after/during a recession and a wave of bankruptcies and mergers.