Before the open bell action on swap board
As I venture into new territory of trying early swap/drop transactions, I'm wondering what the limitations are during the monthly bid award process. Yesterday, not long after I looked at my own May "A" results, I took a look at the Pilot Swap Board and found some captains already had May swap/drop requests on the Board. To be clear, no "B" results had been posted and captains (me at least) were not yet visible in iCrew (nor are they as I write this). So just for grins, I tried to post a pairing for pick-up, via the "type-in" option. The system response indicated that the specified pairing number was not on my schedule and therefore I could not offer it to other pilots. Similar situation today; A awards out, but not Bs, and even more swaps/drops posted on the Board. So I tried to post again, and my submission was accepted. There is another pilot offering a "just take" pairing that I'm interested in. Would the system allow me to pull the trigger right now? My worry over making an attempt at the moment is the caveat regrading ""no schedule is final until posted in DBMS," as in maybe my final, final iteration of bid award could have a conflict with what I try to pick-up, which could create a huge cluster-f if the Pilot Swap Board placed a pairing on my schedule prior to the regular bid result posting to DBMS. So if my questions are not clearly inferred by the preceding rambling: 1) is it normal to be able to enter a Swap Board post before your schedule shows up in iCrew? 2) What happens if you try to act on a swap or drop before schedules appear in iCrew? 3) If so, are there any protections against conflict if changes appear between the original Crew Resources Wide Report and the iCrew final version?
- Thanks for any education you can offer!