I think that I addressed the the leave in VT land on a holiday standpiont, but the question is now leave in a "not holiday" time period. Your leave goes through STUCON, and the CO/XO usually goes with their recommendation if they say it should be a no go. I agree that you should bring up your dates right away, but I can tell you that every VT out their has some version of the same check-in speach, and that speach goes something to the tune of "each individual case will be looked at here, but unless it is an extremely rare situation or an extreme emergency, don't plan on taking any leave here because it will not be approved. You have no time for leave from now until you are complete!" Trust me, that is pretty close to the way all the VT's give it to you on the first day. Not only is the skill degradation from time out of the cockpit an issue, but with MPTS and class flow sytems to work through, you have a very set time to make it all the way from start to finish in primary, advanced, etc. Each squadron has production goals that have to be met and you are already slated to be somewhere else in a certain amount of time at the start of whatever phase you are entering. This is especially true of advanced but applies to all none the less. There is about 2 weeks of fudge built in to your syllabus, and that is usually burned up with delays due to wx, med down, squadron behind, hurricanes, any other unforseen event, etc. In short, there is not much time for or any time built into the system for leave. Your focus is expected to be flight training. As was stated above. and pretty well, any of these that we have had on a non-holiday situation have been AT BEST Friday off, back to work first event monday morning. Hopefully that helps answer your question.