My personal opinion on the case
I personally think that there was something else going on in this case. I mean this guy is/was a new captain with the company, so he's at the bottom of the roster.
According to the memo sent by UNPAC, by Dec. 2014 this guy had accumulated 15 months work and 0 vacations. Now my thing is that training with Copa takes a long time, this guy started system groundschool on Dec. 2013, then he had to go trough VPT, Simulator and IOE for captains, this takes a long time with Copa, and in that particular point in time they were having issues with simulator training since there were not enough simulator instructors and also issues during IOE since they did not have enough IDR instructors.
Additional, this individual must have been between the ages of 40-50, and with plenty of jet experience, therefore training must have been a piece of cake for him. And given the situation that I mentioned earlier with the training, in between sessions he most likely had plenty of time off to relax.
I'll give you 2 scenarios, with an extremely positive estimate, let's say this guy was fully operational and on the flight line on May 2014, from May to December that's 8 months of flying.
With a negative training estimate, this individual was probably sent to the flight line let's say in August, that would make 5 months of flying.
What breaks my chops is that it had to be December? Given the importance and pressure put on by Western, and latin American families to the month of December, I am inclined to think that this captain wanted to bypass seniority and get the month of December off to be with family.
Nothing wrong with that, but to be realistic, the Codigo de Trabajo on Section 3, article 54, page 20 states that Employers are supposed to give you 1 month for every 11 straight months of work, however also on the Codigo de Trabajo, Section 3, article 59, page 21, also says that vacations can accumulate for up to 2 terms if there is an agreement between the employer and the employee.
He asked for vacation, they gave him vacations, seems to me he wanted vacations when he wanted them, and he wanted to bypass seniority.