I think what is clear from this whole debacle is that in this case Seniority is a bad system for the Airlines and a good system for the pilots. Take Air NZ, their most productive fleet going forward is the A320 crewed by the most Junior Pilots, if the bottom 387 do get made redundant the that is almost every A320 FO. You are now left with the most expensive pilots on fleets with little to no work being paid in full with the fleet that can fly having no crew. So down training now begins at a massive cost to the airline in both time and money, at a time where cash burn is king they are forced to do things in the most inefficient way. Qantas is lucky I the respect they can just place people on LWOP and can selectively bring certain fleets back as required with only needing to retrain when fleets or people are cut. So in Air NZ seniority may give the senior pilots a bit of safety but ultimately puts the airline at greater risk of failure which in the long run is not good for any of the pilots. The caveat being is no one saw an event like this happening and we may not see another one in our lifetimes.