MDC (minimum Daily Credit) works exactly as Dutchy describes. It works well when there's plenty of services to many destinations. But what would you say is fair when the following happens? It's a real example;
- Sign-on at 2110 Wednesday night,
- fly to an asian destination, about 10:10 'stick' hours and 11:40 'duty',
- spend 108:40 on the ground (yes... 4.5
days) between flights because that's when the next jet comes in,
- fly home Monday night, about 9:50 'stick' hours and 11:20 'duty',
- sign-off on Tuesday morning at 08:50, about 5.5 days after you signed-on (ie 7 days of 'home' time impacted by flight duties).
Total elapsed time from sign-on to sign-off? 130:30 hours.
Total "Stick time" for that duty? About 21 hours.
Total "credit" for that duty using the company-agreed MDC formula? About 38:30 hours(ie 5:30 hours x 7 days impacted by company 'duty').
Time wasted by inefficient use of a pilot resource? 4 days
more than the contractual minimum allowed... ALL due to scheduling... not the pilot or the contract!
The advocates of 'stick pay' love to say that pilots should be paid only21 hours for their 5.5 day absence. I also know that, precisely because of such vagaries, the stick pay for the 'short-haul' award is higher than the 'longhaul' MDC rate but, in this example, would still not compensate for the surprising inefficiency of this scheduling in my view.
Much as QF would misrepresent this, pilots
do want to be efficient but why should the employee unnecessarily surrender 4 days of their home-life because the employer's resource utilisation is
so wasteful! MDC mitigates against the complacent, no cost, adoption of such inefficiencies by any company. That's a point QF conveniently omits addressing.
It rankles that QF would, in effect, create the very type of inefficiencies it so obviously seeks to use as a weapon against its own. Dirty pool!!! And it doesn't need to be that way!
