Times got set back

[sw889432]

I got a theory, does the departure time in the route system change when the departure location time change? I think my flight is departing at the DST time and is now departing at the non-DST time. Eg. it was departing at 10am DST (landing at 1PM JST) and is now departing at 10am non DST (meaning 11 DST time, and arriving at 2pm JST).

Have a look at the route that isn't working. Both are scheduled so that the second leg starts as soon as the turnaround is complete.

[Unknown98]

Yeah... hmm. So because Mexico does observe DST, and Japan does not, that's throwing some things off. The flight will depart MEX at 10:00 (locally) regardless of DST... so because the times just got set back an hour, the flight is now leaving an hour earlier than it was. But the times in Japan did not change. Thus the issue occurs.

Dang, I wonder how real airlines deal with this problem lol? I mean technically the system is performing correctly, the flight leaves MEX at 10:00 like it should. I really don't know what I can do to address this. Other than creating an edit route function (which is in the works) to let you edit the departure/arrival times without having to create an entirely new route. It'd be a pain to have to do that manually for the affected routes twice a year... but I don't think I can make it happen automatically.

[sw889432]

The simple, and usual solution at most airlines is to make it "not" account for DST, as in making departure at the same time in relation to UTC. If it leaves at 10:00 before, now it leaves at 09:00. Usually it changes on the DST observing side, or if both sides observe DST, the side with that observed it first changed for, the side that isn't the headquarters, or the side with the less busy airport.

If this is blanket implemented in Airline Enterprise, it will screw up people flight demand for those who depart between 5-6 am, since that will shift them into 4-5 am in the Fall.

The other option is to let us schedule according to UTC time, instead of the local time.

[Ryan97]

I had this issue with my London-Moscow route. Had to reschedule the route as the flight was landing in Moscow after 3pm local time, when it was due to depart at 3pm. Thats because the uk time changed i assume

[Unknown98]

It'd be really difficult to make the routes change departure time automatically. Because not only would I have to edit the departure time of the first flight, but then I'd have to re-calculate the departure times for all of the subsequent flights. And I'd have to do that at a very specific time each year, and only on routes that are affected by the time change. I just don't know if it's possible.

Individual flight departure/arrival times are stored in UTC, however route configurations are not. I suppose I could change the system (in the back-end) to store the departure times for each route leg in UTC rather than local time. That would solve this issue, but as you mentioned it would create a new issue for people that have routes departing between 5-6 am. After the time change those routes would now start between 4-5 am. There may also be people who prefer that route departure times remain static through the time change, especially once time-dependent route demand is implemented. But it can't be both ways.

I think the best thing to do is just allow people to edit routes.

Edit: Also, I think the flight history page is using the current state of DST to display arrival/departure times rather than the state of DST at the time the flight took place.
I have a LAX-LHR route that departs at 16:00 and the flight time is 9 hrs 58 min. All of my LAX-LHR flights show departing at 16:00 and arriving in LHR at 08:58 when in reality they arrived at 09:58. LAX is 8 hours behind LHR except for the 2 weeks where it is only 7 hours behind. Once the US changes their times next weekend I think it should sync back up, but still probably something I need to address.

[Ryan97]

I dont think its worth all thr hassel. But being able to edit routes would be a help