Originally Posted by rickair7777

It would actually be illegal to blatantly, intentionally, target a competitor's employees en masse. The slots and gates (and maybe planes) would *normally* have more value than pilots, so an acquisition would normally be how it would go down.

But if the shortage gets bad enough, there's nothing to stop them from hiring any who bother to apply if they have reasonably competitive resumes... and by definition most AS pilots should have decent resumes (compared to CFI's or noob regional FO's).