When I was maintenance engineering with BA at LHR I worked with a guy who lived in Perth Australia and went home once every 3 weeks or so. He used to go on the 4 days off of our (nightmare) 7-4-7-3 pattern, and would use a couple of days leave each time as wraparound "travel" days. As he was using staff travel sometimes he couldn't go and sometimes he was about 2 days late getting back!! This was about 12 years ago, when you could use staff travel for something useful!!