A private equity company would want a return on its investment so where Cobham goes from here is anyone's guess, but it will surely depend on market forces post Covid-19.
Not withstanding the fact that anything in the universe is possible, a return on its investment would hardly come from deviating into Australian RPT, even before considering Qantas own the B717s anyway.
I suspect any rumour stemmed from a momentary thought of 'I wonder who the next biggest operator after VA is?' and decided 'oh Cobham!' (or Alliance I dont know).
Hopefully VA stays put, but I suspect that in the worse case the probable outcome would be a foriegn investor rebuilding VA in a new brand in and under a different business model.