It’s incredibly far off.

So your theory is American comes in, says “we want to buy NK but we don’t want the “expense”
of merging NK pilots with AA pilots, so we are going to buy them and merge them with PSA, get their planes, and put their pilots with PSA”

1) In a merger, NK pilots go with the planes. So in your example, does PSA now have a fleet of A320 series aircraft? If so, that violates scope for mainline.

2)Do the A320s go to AA
mainline and the NK pilots go to PSA? If so, that violates NK scope.

3) Does AA management try and have NK A320s fly as an “alter ego” carrier? If so, that violates scope of probably 2 carriers.

The Frontier/Republic/Midwest/Lynx debacle was an incredibly different mess all together with 4 airlines, which, eventually failed to come to fruition