I think the ultimate reason I'll never fly for an Airline is that I don't have the attention-span to figure out whether or not I'm getting screwed. Line credit? Block credit? Deadhead pay? Cancellation? TRIP RIG? I thought a rig was something that attracted either lot-lizards or oil spills. Christ, just make sure the check arrives on time with the correct number of zeroes and the decimal in the right place.
Nah it's easy.
Three day trip and your contract says you have a 5 hour duty period minimum so it effectively should pay at least 15 hours. But it only has three legs worth about 10 hours. That means you have 5 hours of credit.
Now you get cancelled on one of those three legs and have to deadhead. If you're paid straight time for deadheading, there's no money loss.
A crap ton of airlines don't have duty period minimums, full pay for deadheads and it leads to you spending lots of days on the road with low total, but potentially great hourly pay.
It's all about the language but also about the rates. They go hand in hand and primarily why it's challenging to compare contracts side by side.
Even the APA's recent contract comparison is somewhat of a joke as some things they say we have, we don't, things we apparently lack, we actually have and it's got some "interesting" future presumptions.
More money more time off.