This is a pretty accurate breakdown of the process. What cannot be overstated is the impact individual personalities have on this process. My experience has been that hiring authorities will very, very rarely directly tell a prospective CC that they are in their plan. CC selection remains one of the least transparent processes in an officer's development. Based on the daynightindicator's comment above, this appears to be a substantial difference between MAF and CAF. Furthermore, even if you're told one-on-one by a hiring authority that you're "in the plan", that is almost exclusively followed with a caveat of "but things can change." These changes can be anything from the hiring authority changing his/her mind, to having a ranking officer implant a hire into a wing's game plan.
Edit to add: like most things, timing is everything. You have a 50% chance of finding yourself in a situation where the wing commander/hiring authority that's in the seat when PE nominations are due will not be the person that does the actual hiring after he/she leaves command in a typically two-year summer PCS cycle... yet another impact of individual personalities.