I agree with you Fargoo.
It's really not as though the pilot community are the only people that go above and beyond. Try talking to passenger service staff that go 40-60 staff down per shift. No extra payments for working 'one-down' for them.
Look at the dispatchers covering multiple flights due to people leaving or sickness. Look at the load controllers covering for the loss of 10 of their colleagues. Yet load sheets still get to the crews in 10 minutes or less, so they can go on doing their 'above and beyond' bit. Consider the engineers going out of their way to fix something that could cause a cancellation. Why stay on after your shift, going above and beyond, when you can just write it up, make it U/S and go home? Consider yourself important by all means - after all, you fly the bus. But you wont go anywhere without my loadsheet first..
What I'm saying is, we don't have our heads up our arses, we just get on with our jobs, and don't have the arrogance to go on telling people how we hold the airline together or stop the sh*t hitting the fan. We just do it.