I know how it was applied, but SW threatened to liquidate and part-out the airline if they didn't "voluntarily" accept a staple job.

My premise is that AS is to big (and expensive in this context) to liquidate... for the sole purpose of doing an end-run around Mccaskil-Bond just to give SW pilots an upper-hand (staple) in an SLI. Don't think SW management cares that much about how senior their legacy pilots are.

Presumably SW wanted to ditch the tranny 717's anyway. In the case of AS, *presumably* part of their intent would be to acquire a small-ish airbus subfleet to try it out for a while with an eye towards long-term diversification. If the max crashes had happened 5-8 years from now and grounded the majority of SW's fleet for 1+ years, they would be SOL (or at least in need of a big federal bailout).