And whilst there might be an element of wishful thinking in that, Boeing selling airplanes for a living after all, it actually doesn't appear ALL THAT off the wall either, when you look at the effect even fairly minor QOL work rule changes can bring to staffing requirements. There is an interesting discussion going on over at the United thread:

Holy Increasing Utilization Batman!

Concerning how offsetting the increasing utilization from 52.2 to 54.4 block hours per month year to year would require an additional 513 pilots to be hired, just for United.

It isn't just more money per flying hour that changes going from the regionals to the majors, it's that there are a lot more hours for pay per block hour compared to the regionals. And at a certain point, since taxes are eating up your pay increases anyway, a lot of the negotiating clout goes into QOL stuff.

I looked at the United contract and there is damn near three pages of verbiage on what seat (first class, business class, etc.), United pilots will be booked for on deadheads, sorted out by length of deadhead, foreign or domestic, company aircraft, competitor, etc., same for hotels, flying credit for going through customs, and damn near every other facet of their QOL.

It's a hell of lot more difficult for the legacies to say that recruiting and training have suddenly gone FUBAR, so everybody needs to fly 80 hours of block time this month, contract be damned.