It also only works if you have positive coverage needed to drop.

A PB day used to drop a reserve day gets you ~4:30 per day. As was said in a NB category putting them in the middle of a 3 or 5 day reserve block is a very tactical use. Just remember that a TOFF day is a hard no fly day, so you cannot get a GS/IA or anything else on that day.

Unsued days earned this year fully convert to vacation days April 1 2025. Vacation days in the next vacation year will be with 4:35, so roughly the same value as a dropped reserve day.

In the end, I’d highly recommend using just picking a month to bid REG and burn them. NB categories can get 8-12 hours per PB day. WB categories kill it with 12-16+. If you don’t burn the days with a month as a REG then you just need to figure out when you want to utilize that time off. You can use it sporadically throughout reserve months tactically dropping days or use them in one big chunk when they convert to vacation and tag onto one of your awarded weeks next vacation year. Or some combination of the two depending on how many days you’ve got banked.

One last thought for people who like the thought not using banked days and letting them convert to vacation (SUPP days) to make for a longer vacation period - this is still a very inefficient use. You’d be better off burning the PB days for 9+ hours each. TOFF time is pay and credit and you can bank credit hours over 80, up to 20 in a bid period. Then you can buy vacation days for 4:35. So you can let one PB day convert to 1 SUPP day worth 4:35, or if you can burn that PB day for 9:10 and bank the time, that same single PB day then buys 2 SUPP vacation days for the next vacation year.