It depends. If they have enough applicants with good credit, they will probably just take them first...a lot easier than listening to everyone's sob story and trying to read between the lines and figure out who's telling the truth and who's not.

The fundamental conceptual error that a lot of people (especially entitlement generation) make about airline hiring is that they assume the process is intended to be "fair".

That is the furthest thing from the truth, the airlines just want to avoid training failures and that one really bad apple. They are perfectly willing to discard 100 good guys/gals if they think the ringer will get tossed in the process. The whole thing is only going to be fair to the extent required by law...and there's no law that says they have to give you a chance if you have background issues.

The problem with various background "issues" that people have is not that they are inherently bad people because of the issues, but rather that it is more work (often a lot more) to research those kinds of things and make a decision. Then the decision maker might be going out on a limb...if he works to find a way to accommodate someone with an issue, and that person later has a recurrence, it could reflect poorly on him.