Originally Posted by
ColdUpHere
PCS "anomaly": I tried swapping a 5-day for a 3-day and a 2-day over the exact same days. PCS wouldn't allow it due to Reserve Required being equal to Reserve Available.
I didn't think PCS would prevent this swap but it did. When I talked to Scheduling, they said the PCS software isn't really smart enough to see what I was trying to do and saw it as a drop -- which I couldn't due because of Reserve levels. And Scheduling isn't able to manually override PCS even though what I was trying made perfect sense to the scheduler.
PCS is what it is, but does anyone else have experience with not being able to swap in a similar case?
Scheduler is totally clueless. You can absolutely swap for trips that cover the exact same days, and block time doesn't play any part. What probably happened is one of two scenarios:
1). There are lots of Q trips in NYC 320b pot. Those trips are trips that someone has tried to personal drop, but there are not enough reserves available to do so. They show up in open time so that if another pilot wishes to whiteslip the trip, they can. However, you cannot swap for them, unless the trip you are dropping has greater reserves available than required on every day of your trip.
2) The trip you are trying to drop releases after 2330-spilling over into the next day. The swap will now look at that as a 6th day, disallowing your swap.
Contract section 23W5 has an excellent discission of how swaps work. (FYI-there are also special rules in place for net reserves over holiday periods.)
Omar