Only time will tell what was the smart thing to do. There are NO guarantees for any of us.

Just to add to the discourse though, if I remember correctly, Denver would have become a SWA domicile almost immediately. Additionally, it would have been fenced off for F9 pilots for a period of time, guaranteeing their seniority positions as long as they didn't bid out of Denver.

All F9 pilots (who weren't furloughed) would have been pay protected or received a raise up to SWA levels.

On the "bummer" side, I'm pretty sure that SWA would have furloughed up to 100 F9 pilots and pretty much eliminated a lot of the non-flying jobs in Denver. Additionally the Frontier brand would have gone away.

I wish we could have found a way to make it work for all of us, but in the end, I think it was impossible given the time constraints. I also think that RAH wanted F9 much worse than SWA did.