You're probably referring to "block or better".

Let's say you do this trip (as posted on here):

I've highlighted the "block time" for each leg, essentially what you'd get paid to do the flight if everything ran on time.

Now, let's say you did the first leg and it took you 1:05, so you went under "block" by :05. For the better companies, you'd get paid 1:05 plus what my company calls schedule differential (SD time), which would be :05, so your total pay for that leg equals 1:10. Which was block time.

Now, let's say you had some delays for the next two legs, and it took you 1:35 and 1:25 for the second and third legs. You'd now be + 0:10 for the second leg and + 0:10 for the third leg, so you "made" an extra 20 minutes.

The forth leg went real quick, and it took you 0:59 to do it, so you'd have an SD time of 0:15, to bring the credit for the leg back to what it was blocked for, 1:14.

In short, you can't ever get paid LESS for doing flights, even if it took you less time to do it.

However, some companies handle this block or better in different ways. Some pay block or better based on the entire day, ie for the day you:

flew "under block" 20 minutes (5 mins on first leg, 15 mins on last)
flew "over block" 20 minutes (10 mins on second and third leg)

So by underblocking 20 and overblocking 20, it would be a wash and you'd just get paid your credit for the day (5:04).

At AWAC, we are paid on a leg-by-leg basis, so even if we underblocked by 20 mins the first and last leg, we overblocked the second and third leg, so we'd be up 20 mins on the day or a pay of 5:24 for that day.

Figuring leg-by-leg gives me an extra 3-5 hrs per paycheck of SD time that would most likely be washed out if it was considered on a day-to-day basis.

Another cool thing about "block or better" is several days ago, for a 2:05 blocked flight, we sat on the ramp during a thunderstorm for over 2 hours. We ended up block 4:15 for that flight. If you worked at some of these bottom feeders, your pay would still be 2:05 (essentially credit time), your pay wouldn't increase based on the fact that you sat in that airplane with pax on the ramp (or in a hold, or whatever) for more time than it was blocked for. Having block or better, I estimate I make an extra 10-15 hours per paycheck. This is SIGNIFICANT.

Another thing to consider is duty rigs. Viewing the schedule again:

Here I've highlighted the ground time, essentially the time spent on the ground not working or making any money. It can vary here from 25 minutes to over 4 hours. This is "unpaid time" for the most part. Yeah, it sucks. It's the reason why the pay per hour is higher than your burger flipping job.

The 0929 is your total duty time. The total duty time is the time spent from when you are first scheduled to appear at the airport to when you are scheduled off on your last leg, plus 0:15. You are scheduled to check in at 1330, and scheduled to finish the last leg at 2244 + 0:15, so that would be 2259 when you are scheduled to go off duty. 2259 - 1330 = 9:29 of "duty time". (note: the duty is figured off of actual values, so if you got home later your duty would be longer, but for sake of simplicity I just used the above trip at face value)

Air Wisconsin has a 2:1 duty rig, which means you are paid 1 hour of flight pay for every 2 hours of duty. 9:29/2 = 4:44 of duty pay. In the case above your "credit" for the day was 5:24 on the awac contract assuming you overblocked 20 mins (Note: this isn't an awac trip though, I'm just referencing it) so you'd get paid your credit of 5:24.

If you had a different trip that happened to credit, say, 4:00 hrs for the same duty time you'd get paid 4:44 for that day. This comes in handy because it basically forces the company to put together efficient schedules otherwise they have to pay you half your 'hourly' wage just to sit around and do nothing. It's not so much a money maker, just more of a way to make it so that you aren't sitting around doing nothing not making any money.

AWAC also has a trip rig, where as you divide your "time away from base" by 4 to come up with that. A typical trip will have you away from home 80 hours for a 4-day trip, so no matter how crappy the days are, you'd be paid 20 hours of pay for that 4-day trip (80/4 = 20). Prior to concessions, which were needed to keep our "costs" in line with companies such as mesa that are now doing the flying we used to do, it used to be 3.5, so an 80-hour 4-day would have credited a min of 22:51. Doesn't seem significant, but that would worth an extra two days off a month...

Companies that only pay 'credit time' should be avoided, IMO. I make CONSIDERABLY more than a mesa pilot, (which isn't much !!) even if the payscales were equal (which they aren't).

If my flights are canceled for ANY reason, I get full pay. Mesa? Those trips are removed from your schedule and you aren't paid. That's just the tip of the iceburg. Remember, there is a reason upgrade at mesa is so short!