Your Golden days must be in well in advance. It is not a request and must be honored. That is the reason for putting them in so soon. When they build the CQ patterns they look at the Golden days. If every pilot in his training window bids 25-30 Dec off there will be no posted patterns those days. All the patterns will be filled. This means failure to bid Golden days can be a big mistake. If you are the only one without Golden days 25 to 30 Dec and there is a 25-27 Dec pattern you are getting it regardless of your seniority or actual training bids! Always bid Golden days in a Holiday month.
In addition you can’t be awarded training over your Golden days even if you bid for it. If a perfect BB training pattern shows up on 5 to 7 Jan and you put Gokden days 1 to 5 Jan you can’t be awarded it regardless of how you bid. That is why you have the option to use 1 to 5 days. If you want New Years off but don’t care about anything after the 2nd best to use only 2 days on 1 and 2 Jan.

Thanks. I didn't realize they were so powerful; perhaps we should use the term "post CQ golden days" instead of "bid".

I wish we had something analogous for IQ.

So if you neglect to even enter a CQ bid, will PBS honor your days off request in your monthly/default bid when assigning CQ?

Or are they 2 completely different animals?

What SF said above! You don't want to be the only one who didn't put a golden days over that holiday weekend. If they build a CQ pairing over that weekend and you're the only one without a golden day, you're getting the trip...even if you're the most senior pilot.

*Note: this is if you're in your must go month or there are equal number of CQ pairings and pilots up for training that month. Remember if there are 10 pilots up for training (early/may/must, doesn't matter) and there are 10 pairings...everyone is going to CQ.

It will only look at whatever is in your training bid.

Different animals.

Thanks to all the replies, I was able to bid for my December golden days. I expect I will get them as XX days on RES since they are nowhere near the holidays, I scheduled my HPDE figuring early to mid December would be easy to get my requested days off. Thanks for this PBS tip as well, I would LOVE to train as close to the holidays as possible since I’m guaranteed a trip if I’m not in the sim.

Just to be clear, you don’t bid for Golden days. They are yours to place where you want and you can’t train over Golden days period.

Be careful using golden days. Once they are on your schedule they cannot be removed. I understand their value for holiday bidding but outside of a holiday I’ll never use them again.

There always seem to be a few who forget to bid CQ Golden Days and will be traveling to Atlanta on Thanksgiving Day to hop in that A-period sim on Black Friday as well as those who forget to lead their CQ bids with "Avoid Voluntary Training" in their early month. 😁

Poor terminology on my part.

I'm glad those days are sacrosanct, I really need those days off! Now as long as every pilot doesn't decide they really want to work during their kids winter break I should have zero problem getting the XX days I want earlier in the month :).