Originally Posted by
FL370esq
I wouldn't say it was valueless. You got the value of the vacation bank for that week on top of your 75 hour-ish schedule and, as I seem to recall, the vacation day was a bit more lucrative than today's 3+15/day pay out. Ergo, you were getting about 100 hours of pay for working a full month with vacation whereas the current PBS system with high ALVs sets you up for 85-87 hours of pay and still working pretty much a full month.
It was valueless. There was no vacation bank in those days. That came later. You got paid the value of any trips that touched your primary or secondary vacation week. All other vacation weeks touching trips were dropped however you were only paid for time within the actual vacation footprint. As a example if you touched a 4 day trip with the last day of your tertiary vacation by one day you got the value of that one day only. You then had to scramble to pick up time for a full month. If any week touched nothing you got nothing.
In actual practice as a junior guy I could usually get a 3 day trip inside of vacation so I would get somewhere between 15 and 18 hours pay. You could also bid reserve instead. If you could place the vacation exactly between blocks of off days you would get seven additional days off for the month. If however you ended up with 4 off days inside the vacation you only got 3 additional days off. Pay was the reserve guarantee regardless.
As a senior guy I could usually touch two 3 day trips with my primary and secondary week and get 30 to 36 hours pay for those weeks. We did not normally have 4 day trips in my category