Pilot salaries cost the airline something like a dollar per ticket. You could halve pilot salaries and it would make little bottom-line difference to the mess that mismanagement have put this airline in. In fact it would probably increase costs as half the pilots would leave the airline. QF spends almost as much on I.T. as pilots - and crap I.T. it is too - along with management, QF I.T. is the joke of the industry.
Its pilots are probably one of the best marketing tools the company has (along with its engineers). So the solution to the problem is to get rid of its pilots and its engineers? Joyce and Clifford probably think so, which is why they must go.
Management screwups cost this company more annually than the salaries of the pilots and engineers... Freight cartel fines, APA buyout costs, wrong aircraft, wrongly configured aircraft, bad choices of IFE, cost cutting on product such as catering, pissing customers off with JQ on routes they want to fly full-service, failure to chose the best joint ventures (alliance airlines) seriously destroying the network options, failure to invest in appropriate network destinations, failure to keep staff onside, failure to negotiate EBAs in good faith resulting in huge PIA costs, failure to maintain the image of a premium product, failure to maintain the icon status of the airline, failure to implement a good middle-management structure to create managers who proactively manage upwards with improvements to processes and products instead of just focusing on covering their own arses and KPIs... I'll stop now but could go on for pages.