If both companies don’t rein in their attrition it won’t be date of hire, it’ll be last man standing. Except for line holding CAs. Especially for NK. Especially when legacies are having a shorter upgrade time than either NK or B6, granted, in some of their less desirable domiciles, but even so.

I’m not sure, when you look at the recent pay raises in the regionals , that either airline management can hope to stretch out current contracts to a JCBA. If they don’t start dickering soon and getting out some seriously improved agreements as a bridge to the JCBA, today’s lineholding CAs may be the only ones left from the merger announcement date - assuming either company survives. In the current environment, two and a half years is an eternity.