lucifer, all due respect, pilots are not exposed as much as cabin crew... Yes i know we all breathe the same air up there, but chances of catching it airborne in such a dry environment is much less than catching it from the person you just shook hands with as they got off, who not minutes before was wiping their nose.
Picking up trays of tray tables and stacking them into trolleys, having hundreds of people up to 4-5 times a day, sneeze, cough, grab, and touch you... Chances of catching something are a lot higher in the cabin than from the 1-2 other guys in the flight deck.
I do agree that the system is abused. A couple of girls I used to work with were notorious with the amount of sick days they took. Worst thing was, everyone knew about it, including management. What they didnt know is that management were going to do something about them until they dissappeard to another airline 1 giving 12 hours notice of resignation, the other just not turning up for duty - was interesting turning up for work and being the only flight attendant there - but not uncommon.
Its a hard situation to solve, the company I worked for was insistent that we didnt turn up to work with blocked ears. The nature of the flying we did (remote islands) meant if someone went sick there was no way around it other than to fly the aircraft back empty (2hrs each way), pick up a new crew, and do it over. This happened once and cost many 10s of thousands of dollars, and put crewing out for a week.
The idea about watching trends (dates etc) I am suspicious of. Just like we are expected to be available any day of the year, sickness can happen any day of the year. Still, for blatantly obvious cases this could be handy.
Why not just have a list of approved doctors, who they know are not going to fudge medical certificates? Yes its nice to see your own doctor, but other than having private investigators or expecting people to turn up to prove it anyway, I dont see any other alternatives myself.