G'day Blueloo.
I'm kind of familiar with the formula that's used to calculate the NRT allowances. However, the breakfast and lunch buffets in the hotel now are about 2000 yen and QF give us about 25000 yen, or about 300 AUD, per day.
I think I typically take home about 200 AUD per day off a NRT slip and that's after eating and drinking myself silly. I think you can survive very comfortably on about 10000 yen per day in NRT and I can't really see the justification for the additional allowances. My allowances in NRT make up roughly 10% of my total cost to the company on a typical NRT pattern and of course that percentage is higher for other crew members.
This situation compares with say MNL, where the allowances are about 1/6th of those in NRT or about 50AUD per day which is adequate but only just and I often have to get out the card for a big night at LA Cafe or similar.
I guess my point at the end of all this is having a go at those who complain that the allowances in various ports are worthless. Allowances are only supposed to cover food and drink for the period you are in the slip port. You are not supposed to take home massive amounts of leftover allowances - taxed or otherwise - to pay off the mortgage.
It's interesting to do a comparison with the EK allowances listed here:
http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...t=ek+allowance
and to see that generally we do pretty well in QF by comparison. European ports for example are all about 50 euros per day. I recall typically getting about 3 times that when I still went to Europe.
Don't get me wrong, I like the extra money, I just don't see that it can necessarily be justified.
Cheers.