But why not have the option? If working 8 days a month for $60-$80K isn’t worth it to you, you can choose to take an LOA and get another job for a while. But someone else might be happy with the lessened workload. In either case, we are talking about the bottom 2K-ish pilots that are looking at a no-choice zero income. Seems like some choice is better than nothing.

As someone who’s been looking at a variety of jobs, cracking about $80K a year is pretty tough without connections or specialized training, and $50-$60K jobs aren’t just laying around for the taking. So between that and the folks that can take the income hit in exchange for some amazing min-work QOL, even a 50% cut might be acceptable.