Holiday pay trips are some of the most valuable flying of the year, but the PBS system makes them surprisingly hard to target. PBS has very few properties that help you identify trips touching a holiday pay date. Below are the 3 ways to do it inside PBS, plus the video below of a much faster shortcut using the BidGrid tool.
The idea: in Layer 1, block every day of the month off except the days a trip could occupy and still touch a holiday pay date. Then bid only the trip length(s) you want. Any trip PBS can award you in that layer will, by design, touch a holiday.
The rule of thumb: your open window starts (trip length − 1) days before the first holiday pay date and ends (trip length − 1) days after the last one.
Example — 2-day trips, holiday pay dates on the 23rd and 24th
Leave the 22nd through the 25th open.
Block everything else (1st–21st and 26th–end of month).
Bid 2-day trips only.
Any 2-day trip that fits in that window must fly on the 23rd or 24th.
Example — 3-day trips, holiday pay date on the 23rd
Leave the 21st through the 25th open.
Block the 20th back through the 1st, and the 26th through the end of the month.
Prefer pairing length of 3.
A 3-day trip starting on the 21st, 22nd, or 23rd is the only kind that fits — and every one of them touches the 23rd.
If you're willing to fly more than one trip length, set up the window for the longest length you'll accept, and double-check that the shorter trips that fit still touch the holiday.
Use the Pairing Length on Date property to select trips of a given length that start on a specific date — choosing start dates so the trip's footprint covers a holiday pay date. For example, with a holiday on the 23rd, select 3-day trips starting on the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd.
Caution — review your pairing set carefully. This property will do what it's told for the dates you enter, but PBS may also pull in other pairings outside that set, especially when combined with other properties in the same layer. If your goal is a Layer 1 made up exclusively of holiday pay trips, any extra pairings dilute it. Always open the resulting pairing set and confirm nothing slipped in that you don't want.
Open the bid sheet, look at every pairing you'd consider flying, and ask: does this trip touch a holiday pay date? Then bid the ones that do by Pairing ID on Date.
This works, but it is extremely tedious — expect it to take hours.
If you're a Bidliner subscriber, you can skip all of the above:
1. Build a bid for the trips you're willing to fly — which can be all of them. Bidliner will show you how junior that bid has historically gone, along with every pairing that matches it.
2. View all the pairing details and click your holiday pay dates. On the pairing details page in BidGrid, there is a calendar across the top, and the holiday pay dates are already marked with a red box. Click each holiday pay date to turn it red, and the pairing list instantly drops every trip that doesn't touch at least one of those dates. The calendar also lets you mark days off, days on, or a mix of both to build any block you like.
3. Review what's left — now only holiday pay trips are shown — and decide whether to bid all of them or just your favorites.
4. Tag the ones you want as favorites.
5. Run Batch Bid, which automatically sends them into your PBS bid by Pairing ID on Date.
What takes hours by hand — or careful window-building and double-checking in PBS — we've worked to take minutes in Bidliner. It's by far the easiest way to target holiday pay if you're looking to do that.
