Good question Blogger. Pull up a sandbag and let's educate you before you get bitter....
It's a recruitment and retention pay award, not a pay for actual amount of time spent in the sky.
Hours flown are at the mercy of tasking, serviceabilities and Op necessity. Also the 5 mins spent in the hover by your Chinnok pilot picking up troops in Afg is different to the 5 min show of force by GR4's in Telic which is different to the 5 mins (depending on total onload / refuel rate
) spent by the VC10/ Tri* pilot refuelling the fighters which is also different to the 5 minutes spent by the Nimrods on task. I could go on.
What doesn't vary is the skills, talent and fortitude they all display that needs to be retained by HM Forces and so we have Flying Pay.
Saying that though, maybe we should pay people's basic wage hourly and not daily ? That'd scare nearly everyone except those on Ops that do the majority of the work. Not may people earn their daily rate IMO for what they do at their home base.
How's that for an answer ?