Which is absolutely allowed. Back in the summer of 99, we had an "illegal" GSWC only program. I'll leave it at that, as it was 21 years ago! Part of that was because the categories were so understaffed and the company wasn't really doing enough to fix that issue. Anyway, for awhile the company was assigning lots of GSWC, since that was the only thing pilots were submitting. But eventually they started canceling flights, rather than pass out GSWC.

From a scheduling perspective, a GSWC only solves today's problem, and creates another tomorrow. The company absolutely has the right to internally say "no GSWC will be passed out." Then that decision is sent away from scheduling as to what to do with the flight.

What the company cannot do is bypass that step of trip coverage in the event that they figure out there is a better way further down the trip coverage ladder.

The company has the right to cancel flights, if they wish, even if the motivation is to avoid passing out GSWC. But of coures there is a big cost and operational fallout from that as well.