Am I being underpaid as cabin crew? How to check your payslip

Why payslip errors happen and go unnoticed

Your roster system and your payroll system are usually different pieces of software. Duty hours, overnight counts, and per diem calculations have to be passed from one system to the other - and that handoff is where errors get introduced. A flight that was delayed and pushed your duty past a threshold, a standby activation that added hours not captured in the original roster export, a positioning leg counted as off-duty - all of these can produce a payslip that looks normal on the surface but is paying you for something different from what you actually worked.

Errors also go unnoticed because most people compare their payslip total against last month's, not against their roster. If last month was also slightly wrong, the comparison tells you nothing. The only reliable check is against the actual duties you performed.

The 5 most common cabin crew payslip errors

1. Wrong duty hours. Duty pay runs from report to release. If the roster system exported your check-in times incorrectly, or if a delay was not captured, your duty hours will be wrong. Even 30 minutes per duty day adds up to several hours of duty pay across a full month.

2. Missing overnights. Overnight allowances are triggered by nights away from base. If a layover crossing midnight was coded as a day return in payroll's system, you lose the overnight supplement for that night. Check your overnight count on the payslip against your roster - they should match exactly.

3. Wrong per diem rate. Per diem rates vary by destination. A blanket rate applied to all layovers will undervalue time spent at higher-rate locations. Compare the per diem on your payslip against your layover destinations and your contract rate schedule. Our guide on per diem and HMRC rules explains how the rates work.

4. Wrong pay band or seniority step. Annual step progressions sometimes fail to apply automatically. If you passed an anniversary date and your base salary did not increase, you may have been on the wrong step for months. Check your contract for your step progression dates and compare them to your payslip base salary figure.

5. Wrong holiday pay base. Holiday pay is usually calculated as a percentage of your qualifying earnings. If duty pay or allowances are excluded from the calculation incorrectly, your holiday pay will be understated. This is particularly hard to spot because holiday pay is often paid out in a lump or across a holiday month, not monthly.

How to self-check in 10 minutes

Get your payslip and your roster for the same month side by side. You need: your total duty hours (from the roster), your overnight count (nights away from base), your layover destinations, and your contracted pay rates.

Work through each line on your payslip: base salary matches your contracted step; duty hours on the payslip match the total you count from your roster; overnight count matches; per diem total is consistent with your overnight count and layover destinations. If any line does not reconcile, note the expected figure and the actual figure - that is the discrepancy you will raise with payroll.

The Layvr Payslip Checker does this comparison automatically once you have imported your roster. It flags every mismatch with the expected and actual figure side by side so you do not have to do the arithmetic manually.

What to do when you find an error

First, document everything. Take a screenshot of your payslip, note the expected figure and the actual figure for each discrepancy, and pull the relevant dates from your roster. You need specifics - "I think my duty pay was wrong" is much harder to resolve than "my duty hours on 14 March were 11h20m per roster but payroll shows 9h00m, the difference is 2h20m at my contracted duty rate."

Then report it to payroll in writing. Keep a copy of the email or ticket. Most airlines have a payroll query process - use it, and reference the specific month and pay element. If payroll does not respond within a reasonable period, escalate to your crew manager and copy your union representative.

If the error has persisted across multiple months, ask payroll to confirm how far back they can apply corrections. In most cases, corrections can be made retroactively within the same tax year, but the process varies by airline. Your union can advise on timescales and any formal grievance process if payroll is unresponsive. Read our payslip explainer for more on what each line should say.