Gooch,

You're right. No vacation expansion on VTO line. So, if you can't slide it to get the right days off. Don't bid VTO.

As to "spend less and get more days off"...Can't agree to that. If you use a 7day vacation, on VTO, you'll be assigned additional trips or whatever it takes to get you within that month's BLG range. For this December, that's 68 to 77:12. So, take 42 hrs from that, and you get a possible 26 to 35 hrs of trips added to your VTO line. That's 4 to 6 days of work.

So, in a 28 day month, you end up with 22 to 24 days off. Me? I ended up with 23 days off. And, a BLG of 72 hrs.

You are correct that you are only guaranteed 11 consecutive days( 7 day vacation + 4 days of buffer), on VTO. Doing better than that, of course, depends on your seniority. And, I would argue that if you can't do it on VTO, you probably wouldn't be able to do better on a regular line.

Of course...I don't mind using my vacation hours, for vacation.

I'm totally with you on the PBS thing. It would certainly decimate the best section of our contract, for those that are not senior. By getting rid of the options.

Just my .02.