The point is, an airline aims to make money by flying passengers/freight from A to B. Having its planes fly is not in itself the goal. If nobody had sold tickets to passengers, no qualified cabin crew to meet the requirements, no engineer to make the aircrafts serviceable etc, would the airline still hand us the keys and ask us to go burn a whole load of fuel? Do pilots create value for the company by flying an empty aircraft?
If it becomes impossible for an airline to make money, the pilots will be just as redundant as everyone else.