You can drop trips using vacation time. For example I dropped an Xmas trip that gave me the 20-27 off in December. I think guys also use it to help with hitting IMAX but not sure. If your kid is sick you can do an EO which I think is "emergency off" and I'm pretty sure use vacation for payout for that.

Also during the year the company offers additional vacation proffers and if you have unused vacation that is a time to use it.

For the senior guys who are working nine days a month they already have a ton of vacation time just built into their schedules. Also the guys (mostly LUS and LTWA) who are close to retirement but need the money would float and take the payout - they'll soon have all the vacation in the world after age 65.

An argument could be made that since senior people don't want to use their vacation, we should decrease the top award days and increase the lower level days available.