travel time to permanent duty station

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After reviewing my orders I want to confirm something. On the front page of my orders it states

"Officer will report to the 24-hour arrival point at the permanent duty station not later than 19 days after completion of temporary duty".

On the back side it states

1. Authorized 3 days travel from home to first duty station if travel is by privately owned vehicle. Authorized 7 days travel from TDY station to permanent station.

I plan on driving from Maxwell AFB to Travis AFB in California (36 hour drive). So does that mean I have 7 days to get to Cali, but authorized leave of up to 12 days for a total of 19 days or am I authorized 10 days to get there and 9 days leave for a total of 19 days.

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When you do up your leave paperwork, you will submit for X number of days leave enroute and will report by the end date of the leave. Your travel pay will be paid according to the formulas that pertain to the orders, it does not matter how many days leave you take in conjunction with your travel.

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You are authorized 7 days of travel. Any days over that you will be charged leave. After COT you only have 2.5 days of leave.

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When you do up your leave paperwork, you will submit for X number of days leave enroute and will report by the end date of the leave. Your travel pay will be paid according to the formulas that pertain to the orders, it does not matter how many days leave you take in conjunction with your travel.

Not the case - and I'm saying this because there's two ways to interpret the above post. This is true if you already have earned leave - if you had, say, fifteen days of leave on the books and wanted to take eight extra days to get to California. Then yes, you would only be reimbursed for the seven specified travel days on your orders and the leave expenses are left to you. But, since you will only have 2.5 days on the books after COT, it definitely does matter how many days you take and it all depends on how many days you have earned. The orders border on a "generic" format; they are written to accommodate current active duty members who may want to take leave en route who have enough leave on the books to do so. You cannot "apply" for leave en route if you don't have the days to cover it; what happens is you put yourself "in the hole", so to speak, and then you have NOTHING on the books until you work enough days to get yourself out of that hole.

UTStudent has the correct answer here.

My advice - unsolicited, yes, but I speak from experience - is to never, ever go in the hole on leave unless it's an emergency and you have to. It takes 30 days to earn 2.5 days leave and if you go in the hole, you'll have to work to get yourself out of it. We all tend to end up miles away from our point of origin (smile) and you never, ever know what might happen, so it's best to not do it to start with.

Amazing that they gave you seven days to get to Travis from Alabama in the spring, but they gave a classmate of mine only EIGHT to get to Anchorage, AK from AL - DURING THE WINTER when the Alaska Highway ended up being shut down for 48 hours due to snow. Unbelievable. I don't know how she did it.

Take the seven days. Enjoy your cross-country drive; there's a good chunk of the country to see so plan an interesting route. I'm actually quite envious!

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