Originally Posted by
Total BS
This may be aside your point, and I assume you were framing a hypothetical here so I will cut you some slack, but your example here kind of distorts the truth. Wiping out 2 weeks with only 18 hours of vacation time would be possible but atypical. 18 hours would be typically be a weak 4 day or a fair 3 day pairing, so 2 weeks would probably come at a cost of 30 to 40 hours from your sick bank.
I assume trips touching vacation were previously dropped, so, while you would lose the credit for the trips you could end up with 2 weeks off by using a single "week" of vacation.
With PBS the potential exists for it to just build a line around your vacation, meaning that taking 7 days of vacation (whatever that costs per day) will likely give you only 7 or 8 days off wi trips on either end, instead of the potential 14+ off that was possible.