Because just like time immemorial, "run the clock offense" has always been a sure play when it comes to airline hiring cycles. The USAF does the same thing on our side, in spite of a hemorrhaging of people. And they always get proven right, broken clock twice a day type of thing.

The bias here is that the plurality of hiring since 2016 has been done by people who either don't remember the lost decade, or were too young to be affected by it, so they malign the proposition of a reversion to the mean, as fiction or moot, or sour grapes from the older or timing-disfavored. Meh, we'll see how well that ages.

It's also the reason why mainline isn't anywhere near the level of operational desperation to absorb FFD feed into mainline labor costs, in spite all the hand wringing about the walls crumbling around the regionals, according to the APC oracles on here. Run the clock offense. It just works.