The SAA retirees have had it up to here with the Nwide chaos, so it's not like they're hanging around anyway. Believe it or not, most of them are aware of the situation and sometimes openly wonder why the company doesn't tell the to go, and upgrade the full-time Nwide F/O's. The science-fiction ops manual that requires 100000 hrs on the Starship Enterprise before an F/O can be upgraded is also a problem...
The next issue is the idea of getting contract Captains in to 'tide the company over'. South Americans? Something like that....whoever they are, it's a far greater issue than ex SAA people, who can at least speak english! Maybe I caught the wrong end of that rumour though, it really is just a rumour right now...