I think there is an added factor. The B6 CEO was concessionary from the get-go in an investor chat about the pilot shortage being real, and that B6 was going to have to up the ante for a working CBA. Neither NK nor F9 have shown any indication they are willing to share any of the money they are going to save from all those “synergies” with their pilot groups. So what does F9 think it’s really buying?
It’s increasingly difficult for anyone to leave a major after they make CA. Even F9 and NK CA pay is pretty fair money, but it’s also the seniority that has been accrued that will be lost by starting over, both in going back to the bottom of the bidding and going back to ~$90K (or less counting training pay) at a legacy. Not impossible, and yeah, if you are young enough even economically worth doing. But nonetheless a real grind for a number of years, just to break even.
I think that the B6 plan is to actually compete with the Big Four, both domestically and narrow body internationally, and to be a career airline for pilots that go there. I think the intention was for Sprontier to keep the CAs they’ve got and largely fill their FO ranks with wet-ink ATPs who will be paid just enough to keep them until they have the bonafides they need to move on, keeping only enough to fill their own few retirements and condemning the existing CAs to eternal unpaid IOE instructors.
B6 knows that to make their plan work they are going to have to negotiate a competitive CBA with the Big Four. F9 and the NK BOD hoped to be able to get people on the cheap through a never ending stream of newbie FOs and bottom of the industry CA pay. And absent B6 intervening, I think they would have pulled it off.