Training Tip: It's about time
There I was with four hours to kill before my scheduled flight, so I grabbed a magazine and sat down to start passing the time.
This wasn’t one of those long layovers between airline flights. I was waiting in a flight school lobby for a checkout in one of the school’s aircraft. The late-April appointment had been set weeks earlier, so it came as a bit of surprise to find out that I was four hours early for my session scheduled for “1300.”
I am in the Eastern time zone, which lags behind Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), also known as Zulu Time or Z time, by five hours when standard time is in effect, and by four hours when Daylight Saving Time is in effect, as it was last April (and will be again beginning on March 8).
Nothing was wrong.
Well, it turns out the “1300” entered on to the flight schedule under my name did not mean Zulu time but simply was local time converted to the 24-hour clock. The 9 a.m. appointment (1300Z) I was planning for was meant by the school to be a 1 p.m. session.
Perhaps the missing “Z” or UTC from the appointment confirmation should have helped me catch the discrepancy and verify the intended time, but I don’t recall a civilian aviation outfit using a 24-hour clock without UTC conversion.
Well, better to be four hours early than four hours late, so I fished out my phone to see if any local friends might be up for an early lunch.
Perhaps this experience was the exception that proves a rule: Aviation’s standardized method of keeping time (mostly) avoids confusion and eliminates the need to make time conversions. From weather reports and forecasts to flight planning and notes on sectional charts about the effective time of airspace changes and control-tower operations, UTC rules (unless otherwise noted).
When you look up an airport listing in the chart supplement, the top line of information includes an item like this one “UTC–5(–4DT),” and the publication’s legend explains that “hours of operation of all facilities are expressed in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and shown as ‘Z’ time.”
When remembering to “spring forward” on March 8, take a moment to review how your area’s seasonal conversion works—always time well spent.
