How to read a long haul roster: trip pairings, block hours, credit hours and the difference between duty time and paid time

Nine years of long haul rosters and the roster reading thread on here is for short haul codes. Long haul rosters have their own vocabulary that new international crew do not get taught, so here it is.

The pairing

A long haul trip is a pairing: a sequence of flights and layovers from your base back to your base. AKL LAX AKL is a pairing. AKL LHR (via a stop) AKL is a pairing. The roster shows the pairing as a block of days with the flights inside it, and everything about your month is built from pairings and days off.

Block hours

The time from the aircraft moving off the gate to arriving at the destination gate. Twelve hours to Los Angeles is twelve block hours. Block hours are what most long haul pay systems pay on, and what the regulator's flight time limits count. A month's block hours is the number that decides the flying pay line.

Duty time

The time from sign on to sign off, including the ground time before and after the flight. A twelve block hour flight is a fourteen hour duty. Duty time is what the fatigue rules limit and what some allowances are calculated on, and it is longer than block time on every sector.

Credit hours

The system used at many airlines (the US majors particularly, some others) to pay a minimum per duty day or per pairing regardless of block time, so that a pairing with a long layover and short flights still pays a fair amount. A pairing might have 22 block hours and 26 credit hours because of the minimums. Credit is what lands on the payslip; block is what you actually flew.

Paid time versus away time

On a four day pairing you are away from home for around 90 hours and paid for perhaps 25 of them in flying pay, plus an allowance per hour away. The allowance is the recognition that the other 65 hours belong to the airline too, even in a hotel. Understanding that ratio is what makes long haul pay make sense: the flying pay is high per hour because the hours are few.

Rest

The roster shows the minimum rest between pairings and the crew rest on the aircraft. The rules come from the regulator and the agreement and the roster has to respect them; when it does not, the fatigue report threads on here explain what to do.

Reading a month

Count the pairings, add the block hours, note the days off between them and whether they are real days off or recovery days after an ultra long haul, and look at the layover lengths. A month of three long pairings with three day layovers is a different life from a month of six short pairings with 24 hour layovers, at the same block hours. The senior crew bid for the first kind. The junior crew learn to survive the second.

If your airline uses different words, say so below. The concepts are the same everywhere.