Anyone who truly believes that is just dumb.

The truth of the matter is nostalgia. People who now are very senior doing day trips think back to their former lives. A life where our point-to-point system was one leg a day, 3 hrs of block for 5 hours pay, 5 hours pay for >22 hr overnight or whatever it was before the change, etc, etc. Also, crew scheduling was just so incredibly inept it worked out to their benefit many many times.

Currently, it has almost become more hub and spoke like here. All those one-leg out and one-leg back 2-day trips LGA, DTW, IAH, CLE, etc, etc are pretty much gone out of the bid package (at the moment anyhow, though they declined significantly that past few years). Crew scheduling has also apparently finally learned to read the contract and is exercising their end as you would expect in any normal airline - adding turns at the end of a trip to a reserve pilot, moving days off, etc, etc.

So, yeah can still drop to zero, can still call sick with no "points" or any other kind of repercussion. I guess that's "QoL"...