FBS,
That's what I said, POTL is valid for a year after returning from ops. If you don't take your POTL within the 12 months, you will have a hard time arguing your corner, but if you know the rules for POTL, you can play the system perfectly legally to ensure that you don't lose any annual leave and you get your POTL.
So for example, you return from 4 months OOA in Jan 07 and have 9 days POTL on top of say 29 days remaining annual leave (you've been away lots). You basically have 2 months to get your leave down to 15 days carry over or risk losing it.
In this case, there is no point in taking your POTL (as I found out today) because it is valid until Jan 08 and wouldn't feature in any excess leave calculations at the end of the leave year in Mar/Apr. Instead, you take 14 days annual leave to get you down to the 15 day carry over limit where you won't lose any, and only once you have reached that point start eating into the POTL which you can take at any point until Jan 08. And there you have it, system played, you get time off after ops, use annual leave that you might otherwise lose and carry over 24 days annual leave AND POTL
Simple really in hindsight, but I wonder how many people - as I said, myself included, are/were not aware of the POTL rules and are faced with losing leave because they took POTL rather than annual leave when they came back off ops? Until today, this is the first time that the whole POTL thing had been explained properly. However, I am now wondering whether you can change things retrospectively - ie get the Sqn clerks to add your POTL back to your leave record and take off an equivalent amount of annual leave - I suspect not, but it may be worth a try if you have taken POTL instead of annual leave and are now faced with losing days. Like I said, if the Execs want to play hard rules, then I will do everything I can to play the system and exploit loopholes. Will give it a bash and keep you posted.