When are we ever going to talk about basic pay, NOT meal allowance and extra pay for working days off or leave? Those pay scales are a joke.
Your pay package includes all of that, like I said compare the whole package, if you just compare base salaries you will probably be on less than somebody with a good total package. Airlines will con you by saying their base is better, then pay you measly allowances. Poor allowances and penalty payments mean you will get your ass worked as hard as possible, as it will be cheaper to work you to the bone than employ new pilots. Add FRMS without good penalties and OT allowances and you will be in a working hell... (Jet*)
If you looked at QF international salaries only without allowances you would be missing a huge chunk of their income. That was a big difference when VA started Crz FOs and such, you could be seeing similar Base salary and $100k difference in allowances in those environments.
Then you really need to know what actual workload the company will offer, as you have a lot of income based on workload, so if you are not working you could be on half pay working only to minimum guaranteed hours, which could be quite low if you don't read the fine print. Thats when you get conned with the *equivalent full time pay, meaning if you did work full hours you would get that, but you were employed on schedule B that only gets half that guaranteed.
Usually somebody telling you to only compare base salaries is management from one of the lower end companies...
Theoretically, if you only worked as your roster said, you’d probably earn between $15-30k above the base for 600-700 hours a year.
From What I hear absolute minimum would be additions of about $30K-$40K, half of which is tax free. You'd have to be not flying to earn much less than that. That assumes you claim everything entitled to you, something you need to do at Rex.
PS most loan agencies and the like are on to this now, they don't care about base salary figures, they want to know what your take home pay was, ie actual income. With pay slips as proof that you actually get that from your employer.