As those are lay-off titled as un-gainfully employed - named so by STC himself it was never an option for him to save jobs in the way you described it. And with all those rumors about a cost metric software being involved They never had the plan to do anything different. With a software in place they started preparing the lay-off in early April - so basically with day number one of the lock down they where on the jump to lay-off staff. The so called careful analysis and decision making was not more than keep face propaganda - there haven’t been any other ideas except the chosen one.
EK has 27bnAED cash now to burn for this year - yes they need to saved it to go along as long as possible - 1200 pilots (50/50 on capo and fo side ) cost roughly 1bnAED for 1 year -
it is clear they simply didn’t want to spend it on un-gainfully employed staff - it was worth to spend money on a financial adviser companies and in software but not staff