Originally Posted by LeineLodge

If you go to your time card in iCrew you will see down at the bottom something like "APD available for use: Y (or N)"

This means you haven't used your ONE Authorized drop for this employment year. As someone else mentioned PD's are unlimited, but must have adequate reserve coverage for every day that you want to drop.

To check reserve coverage in iCrew:

Go to Open Time
Click on the bottom option; I think it's Reserve Availability or something like that

If the day is Blue, then you have adequate coverage and the drop should go through. If the required vs. available is even close you still may get it, due to the PCS churn of each run. PCS runs 2 iterations each time it runs to allow for your request to be processed to the max extent possible. For example, you want the 20th off and the coverage is currently -1. 2 more pilots want the 22nd off and they are willing to trade the 20th to get it. After the first iteration of PCS these pilots may be awarded their swap and now your day is +1 for coverage. Voila, you have the 20th off during the 2nd iteration of the same PCS run.

From personal experience I would say you want to get your most important reserve day swaps/drops in for the first PCS run of the month. I believe the 0700 run on the 20th of every month. This way you have given yourself the best chance of getting it approved.

There are many other requirements such as min days on, max off blocks, etc that play into this. If your request is not approved, you can check the status of it, via the PCS link in iCrew and it will give you a reason (albeit sometimes cryptic) as to why the trade wasn't approved.

Also, I don't know if someone mentioned it yet or not, but your ONE APD only requires 25% of the required coverage to be approved - holidays listed in the PWA are the exception.