I totally get your rationale. I've asked myself that question countless times. "What if the Regional Airline Association would just say 'we are not flying for inadequate pay anymore. We're walking out.'?" Unfortunately we don't have the level of solidarity to cancel half the commercial flights in the US.

It's not that pilots are willing to fly for less. It's that they're willing to compromise for the promise that they'll one day fly mainline equipment with the inflated pay rates. We've created a culture in our community that says you have to pay your dues because it protects mainline jobs. Are mainline pilots willing to negotiate contracts that would allow the legacy carriers to pay their regional pilots more? Or dissolve the "regional" model entirely and absorb all those contract carriers? Our legacy carriers have to find some way of remaining competitive in order to pay what they pay to mainline employees.