On Mon, Dec 25, 2023 at 8:43 PM Charlie Gibbs <cgi...@surfnaked.ca> wrote: > > On Mon Dec 25 12:01:59 2023 "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amaca...@einval.com> wrote: > > > Yes - that's the obvious way. I set my machines to /etc/UTC (or > > /etc/GMT) and leave them there. No daylight saving time, no offsets - > > all logs unambiguous. That's why (worldwide) radio logkeeping is/was > > in UTC. If you're travelling in an aircraft, you don't _need_ to know > > ground time but you do need to know flight time against a reference > > time. The Royal Air Force keep to UTC wherever they are in the world > > for just this reason. > > Not just the RAF. All aviation works in UTC, to avoid problems when > flights cross time zone boundaries, and to keep wide-area weather > forecasts sane. Your average airline passenger never sees UTC, > since airlines use it behind the scenes and convert it to local time > for display purposes. (That's why you can see some strange intervals > between departure and arrival times.)
The US airlines I worked for in the late 1980s and 1990s used Zulu time. If I recall correctly, flight arrivals and departures were specified like 10:34Z or 23:10Z. I don't know why Z was used instead of UTC or GMT. Probably to save space, and save some ink if a schedule was printed. I don't know if that is still the case. Jeff
