I agree that pilot rates aren't the problem but strongly disagree that pilots would ever have the need to subsidize. Airlines took advantage of pilot agreements and farmed the flying to the lowest unit cost.

When the feed is too expensive, unreliable, uncompetitive or which other metric is important at the time, the flying comes back. Combined with restrictive scope language, the company can serve marginal markets but it's up to the pilot group to keep/strengthen restrictive language that makes the economic formula favor mainline pilots on a given route.