They can't give you unpaid leave when you don't want it, (at least, we haven't gotten to that point yet) so they are waiting to get all the requests, allocate them, then they will fill in the holes with the paid leave. As we can't see what happens with requests in the leave system, they are free to allocate it at their pleasure. Certainly not how I understood the system was to work, but then again, the cockpit crew response to the UPL has been less than hoped for, so it probably will not have much of an effect anyway. Happy Holidays.