Skyflyer -
First off, I completely agree. You are not going to rock the boat for the sake of 2 days. All I am pointing out, is that you have different rights being a Ltd and Sole Trader.
Your comment about the weekend getting in the way of payment. Should the 12th have fallen on a friday, and you got paid on 16th, that means monday would have been 15th? Meaning the weekend cant have got in the way.
Anyway, I digress
There are people that on regular occasions that are missing very large amounts of money, and have to fight to get it paid. As BRK pay you an amount of money, and then tell you what work you have done, they are in effect giving you a statement. If money is then missing, it is up to you to prove that they actually owe you.
Now I also understand that they can't just pay you what you say you have done hours wise. There must be a cross-check, but as a statement is sent to BRK from FR detailing the hours worked by every contract pilot, why is this not forwarded on to the pilot before pay day inorder for inaccuracies and discrepencies to be checked and corrected before 12th-16th pay day?
As a sole trader / Ltd contract pilot, it is your responsibility to prove to HMRC, should you ever be investigated, how many hours you did, how much you got paid, and where the money has come from for the duration of the time that your accounts must be kept. Voyage reports are the obvious way to do this, but do you not ever find it strange that a computer system that tracks logging in and out, plus duty times and monthly schedule times manages to be incorrect for some reason when it comes to pay day?
An example of the sorts of where BRK are again taking advantage of young pilots because they know what sort of position they are in, and hat the current market unfortunately is an employers market in the aviation industry.
Should you look at the Schedule 1, it very clearly states when you reach the thresholds of JAR 25 hours, your pay increases. So, if things are being done correctly, when you reach 500.01 hours, then every hour subsequently should be invoiced and paid at the higher rate. Not the case. As BRK just pay you an amount, and i bet that none of it for the month in which you reach the threshold is paid at the Contract rate.
Hours have been calculated, and flights organised so that a pilot reaches this threshold at the begining of a calander month, so, effectively this means that you are doing a full months work at a lower rate. This could mean, (and with exchange rates as they are), 100 hours x 20 Euro = 2000 Euro. Now, that is well over £1500 which by rights is yours. Now this IS happening, and people should be aware of this.
As a company providing a service, you should invoice for the work you have done. This is also a requirement if you are VAT registered as BRk pay VAT in stirling, and pay in Euro. You should be able to request VAT in Euro but they will not do that becuase they don't want the hasstle of having to deal with international VAT. Further to this, you will never recieve your VAT before you have had to pay HMRC, meaning you will be a few thousand pounds out of pocket every few months.