I was referring to the FAR 117 requirement for a 10 hour rest break including an 8 hour uninterrupted sleep opportunity. Back in January, it came to light that the Captain rep in SLC was telling his constituents that the "8 hour uninterrupted sleep opportunity" is the same thing as our contractual "8 hours behind the door." Since it's physically impossible for any human being to have the opportunity for 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep with only 8 hours behind the door, that Captain rep was obviously wrong. When I engaged my reps on the issue, I only got one of them to give me a straight answer. I exchanged multiple emails with all of my reps going back and forth and trying to pin them down to a specific answer (it's basically a yes or no question), but all I got from three of them was politician doublespeak. They even copied our email exchange to the chairman of the scheduling committee at the time and he wrote me saying it was 8 hours behind the door. That is simply not right, and to this day I don't know what ALPA's position is on this. I do know, however, what my position is as I'm not going to violate an FAR just because my reps or a chairman of a committee tells me it's okay to do so.

As to the other issues. The only one on which we had agreement in the end was the CDO issue. Sort of. However, I got no indication from any of my reps that they agreed with me on CDO's. Ultimately, they felt the need to get rid of the CDO's in that agreement because they were getting so much heat, but I don't feel like my input had much of an effect one way or the other. I think the only reason they ditched the CDO's was not because they agreed with the input they were receiving but because they were worried about the political backlash they were going to receive if they kept them. I can guarantee you they don't agree with my input for C2015.