Here is my take on the current situation and managements strategy:
Management knows the golden years are over and the only way to survive is drop the routes that lose money and focus on the premium traffic routes as they are never to be able to compete with LCC or Chinese carriers in the economy segment. As such they have to shrink the airline by at least a third. There is no other choice as CX is losing market share anyways.
To avoid laying off the cheapest pilot labour group, strategy is to make it very unattractive to the more expensive senior pilots. I would say target is a pilot group of around 2000 and 80-90 aircraft. When all the dust has settled with cost cutting, early retirement and pilots leaving, the remainder will be made redundant (to hit the target of 2000). Time frame 3-5 years.