Prior to October 2022, FAR – 14 CFR 121.467 regulations mandated that all Flight Attendants, scheduled to a duty period of 14 hours or less, be given a scheduled rest period of at least eight (8) consecutive hours free from duty.
Section 7.V. of our Contract provides for rest requirements exceeding that minimum; that is, a minimum of 12 hours at the home domicile and a minimum of 10 hours on layover.
Our Contract has provided Flight Attendants the option of waiving the contractual rest requirements of the following Contract Sections for the purpose of trip trading:
In addition, Section 6.X. of our Contract provided Flight Attendants with the ability to waive their domestic legal rest from 10 hours to 8 eights at a layover point as an Operational Reliability Incentive.
In October of 2022, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) revised the above-referenced FAR rule to mandate that all Flight Attendants scheduled to a duty period of 14 hours or less be given a scheduled rest period of at least ten consecutive hours and that the rest period is not reduced under any circumstances.
Since the provisions of Section 6.V. and 6.W. of our Contract comply with this FAR revision, meeting the ten (10) hour minimum rest, there is no change to how these sections of the Contract are applied and legal rest may be waived in order to trip trade as outlined in these Sections of our Contract.
However, the FAR language establishing the ten (10) hour minimum legal rest dictates that United can no longer offer the Operational Reliability Incentive, and therefore, invalidates the use of the language in Section 6.X. For this reason, the Contract language in Section 6.X. is no longer in effect.
The minimum legal rest requirement at home or on a layover is a non-reducible ten (10) hours free from duty. Should your schedule change such that your legal rest is reduced below ten (10) hours, you must contract Crew Scheduling to have your schedule adjusted to comply with the FAR.