After our conversation, I talked to some people and looked into this a little further.

From what I'm hearing now, the way they will get around our contract and "hand pick" is that this won't be a branch of ASA or SkyWest. Pilots will interview here, and if selected, will be placed on an 18 month COMA. They will be employees of the Vietnamese company, and still hold ASA seniority on the LOA. So apparently what you heard was correct, I just wasn't thinking outside the box.