I'm not disagreeing with you about merger not happening et.al. but just pointing out that ALPA policy for two NB airlines is basically some combination of S&C and longevity. The timing of when one airline is hiring and when another airline is furloughing is not as important as you think. Arbitrators aren't going to decide on a career's worth of seniority just based on what was happening at the snapshot of whenever the merger happened to close.

It seems that Frontier would not be hiring and growing if indeed it was going to acquire Spirit. It looks like they are trying to capture their market share organically which signals they have decided against a merger.