@BOAC
Hi BOAC, I am a current Ryanair pilot, let me try to answer those for you. We need to look at it from a contractors perspective, when it comes to employees it looks different. 72% of the workforce are contractors (2011 FR SEC Filing)
1) You are only paid for scheduled flight time - 'extra' plus any diversion time is unpaid?
Yes this is true, you only get paid for the hours put on your roster, diversions, holding, tech stops and ALL time spent on the ground is unpaid. For example if you are rostered for a 4 sector day and you end up diverting on sector one, youŽll most likely lose the last two sectors pay, and end up on the ground unpaid instead waiting for the passengers... In short you need to have the hours on your roster and the aircraft needs to be airborne, if not, no pay.
2) Taking MAD-VLC a stage further - suppose at VLC due to slow pax transfer it became impossible to operate back to base and you took 'min rest' at either VLC or after going to MAD? Who arranges and pays hotac?
In this case i would say the company, if you get stuck at a outstation in case of a diversion etc then the company pays and books at least for HOTAC and Transport, but the duty time spent is not paid to any crew member. Food and drinks if away from base is in my understanding always the responsibility of the crew-member.
3) Following 1), does the subsequent flight (VLC-MAD or VLC-base) become a 'scheduled payment' flight?
I think it will for payment to the crew, but only for the scheduled sector time, which is not very long in this case looking at MAD-VLC.