This practice is common in the industry outside the civilised West where workers have some legal protections.
For instance, Hong Kong Airlines currently contracts 28 days AL to pilots. If you request three or four days AL in a month they will roster you for a longhaul flight finishing the day before your requested Leave, and bingo, the three or four days ‘rest and recovery’ you earned is now shown as AL. In effect the employee pilot subsidises the airlines AL budget. Daylight robbery. Perfectly legal.
And no such thing as ‘earned weekends’ on AL either.
Office staff work Monday to Friday, and if they take 5 days AL they automatically get the Sat/Sun off as well (and they get to sleep in their own beds every night the rest of the time).
Meanwhile aircrew, who’s lives are constantly disrupted by 24/7 rostering, are deprived of the Sat/Sun attached to AL (no such thing as ‘the weekend’ for aircrew), thus being effectively discriminated against compared to the Admins (who may, coincidentally, write those rosters).
Last edited by Killaroo; 6th Nov 2017 at 01:54.