Symptoms, Cause and Cure
There is a lot of discussing of the symptoms here but not a lot of the cause - or the cure.
I think we should all realize that the 92 hours in 31 days, 89 in 30 etc. is a not a threshold to the Company. In fact they expect more.
Ask yourself:
Assuming you worked every month to the productivity threshold every month, how many productive hours would you do in a year?
That would assume no leave in the year. So make adjustments for that in whatever way you want but the fact remains the total productivity hours in the year would have to come down.
Now ask yourself: If I did these hours would the company be satisfied? And the answer is NO. They want MORE. They have to have more as they simply do not have the pilots to crew all the duties required. The monthly target is in fact ABOVE the average productivity threshold. This is a fact few managers will admit to you. Ask them and they will waffle around the subject of how much is expected.
Hence they have 2 choices: Pay you overtime or take the time from you without paying. Paying nothing is obviously the preferred choice.
The easiest way to take the time is to get individuals to produce duty hours in months where they have leave. (My own view on this is that it is a form of theft) If an individual can produce 92 duty hours in a 31 day month and still have 8 days leave, then leave will have no impact on the duty hours a pilot can produce in a year without having to pay him productivity pay. Perfect.
But what about paying productivity pay above the monthly threshold? It is clearly less attractive than simply writing off leave or keeping productivity at the maximum level without additional payment (a matter of perspective but the same thing).
However paying productivity remains very attractive to the company. The amount paid for productivity is way below what an hour actually costs for a new pilot with salary, housing, education and so on producing his/her own maximum productivity. A bargain!
As I have said before a pilot should only be expected to work to a productivity of 44 hours in a 30 day month in which he has 15 days leave. (15x3 - 1). The company has already defined this logic haven’t they? They expect 89 hours in a 30 day month and 92 in a 31 day month. Any more is both rewarded but provides a fatigue concern. Neither of these factors is removed because of leave. If a pilot had his 15 days leave then came back to 15 days crammed with 92 hours he will be fatigued whether that is spent in an aircraft or a ZFT simulator and the leave has been free to the company.
Rostering are actively seeking to maximize hours in months containing leave. This avoids hiring many more pilots. They have been directed to do this and are getting better at it. A lot of the hours so allocated will be free hours! Hence we see so many reports of this in this thread and others.
Lamenting on Pprune, of course, will not help. Its enlightening to see how much of this is actually going on however and gives a scale of the abuse of both fatigue and fair remuneration.
But you have tools: Examples are to complain (in writing), call in fatigued, or submit your case to the FRMS boys so they can gather data. Only that will stop your exploitation. And it will. There are too many top and middle managers exposed by these practices if they continue and result in a serious problem.