Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

Schedule (airport opening times) in French VAC: How to interpret?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2532729/daylight-saving-time-and-time-zone-best-practices

And we are not yet talking about opening times during “la pause cafe”, French holidays, local strike calendar, leap years and 2000 problem bug :)

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Biggin Hill

Zorg wrote:

Hrm … but this is not consistent with the above discussion, where “UTC WIN; SUM SKED: -1HR” meant “apply -1 hour offset to times in summer”. Or does the separate specification for summer and winter imply that the above rule does not apply (i.e., the part about “Timetables unless otherwise specified”)?

My feeling is that this “clever” way of specifying times creates more confusion than worth it …

It is coherent. The gerenric statement is unless otherwise specified.
For Calvi they have written specific times for the summer and winter.

But this is not always the case eg LFQG

So if the AIP says open from 7.30 to 16.30
in the winter it is from 7.30 to 16.30 UTC ==> 8.30 to 17.30 local time
in the summer it is from 6.30 to 15.30 UTC ==> 8.30 to 17.30 local time

Last Edited by jfw at 10 Oct 13:39
jfw
Belgium: EBGB (Grimbergen, Brussels) - EBNM (Namur), Belgium
No. It’s:

Summer: 0445 UTC equals 06:45 LT until sunset+30 min
Winter: 0545 UTC equals (again) 6:45 LT until sunset+30 min

I’ve no doubt that your end result is what the writers intended.

But I don’t follow your logic on the Summer time.

You’re taking the summer opening time as 0445UTC and converting to local. But the heading specifies that the summer time is UTC-1. So 0445 would equate to 0545UTC then convert to local.

As I say, I’m sure you are right on what they intended. But it means that that SKED SUM: -1Hr is totally superfluous because they’ve already specified the times as UTC for both summer and winter.

It’s a terrible way of specifying time. They should just stuck to UTC like everyone else and stop trying to be clever

EIWT Weston, Ireland

Emir wrote:

No, it’s not. It’s exactly as I wrote above – it’s always from 06:45 LT, which is 05:45 UTC in winter and 04:45 UTC in summer.

The passage “Timetables unless otherwise specified UTC WIN; SKED SUM: -1HR” is not crystal clear. There are generally lots of very strange English translations in the French AIP. E.g. according to ICAO Doc 8400, “SKED” means “schedule(d)”, which doesn’t make sense to me in this context.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Ibra wrote:

Correct

No, it’s not. It’s exactly as I wrote above – it’s always from 06:45 LT, which is 05:45 UTC in winter and 04:45 UTC in summer.

LDZA LDVA, Croatia

Zorg wrote:

Is my following interpretation correct?
Summer: 0445 UTC – 1 hour offset → 0345 UTC → 0545 L
Winter: 0545 UTC → 0645 L

Correct, again: +1h to any time you see in French AIP gives you LT (usually LT will be the for Winter/Summer )
For once, you have airfield opening LT time that differs between Winter/Summer, but still AIP + 1h = LT does work

Last Edited by Ibra at 09 Oct 19:32
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Emir wrote:

No. It’s:

Summer: 0445 UTC equals 06:45 LT until sunset+30 min
Winter: 0545 UTC equals (again) 6:45 LT until sunset+30 min

So basically, airport has same working hours in local time which is completely normal and expected because people working on it usually have same working hours all year around. And SS is important due to LFKC specifics and surrounding terrain.

Hrm … but this is not consistent with the above discussion, where “UTC WIN; SUM SKED: -1HR” meant “apply -1 hour offset to times in summer”. Or does the separate specification for summer and winter imply that the above rule does not apply (i.e., the part about “Timetables unless otherwise specified”)?

My feeling is that this “clever” way of specifying times creates more confusion than worth it …

LFHN, LSGP, LFHM

Zorg wrote:

Is my following interpretation correct?

Summer: 0445 UTC – 1 hour offset → 0345 UTC → 0545 L
Winter: 0545 UTC → 0645 L

No. It’s:

Summer: 0445 UTC equals 06:45 LT until sunset+30 min
Winter: 0545 UTC equals (again) 6:45 LT until sunset+30 min

So basically, airport has same working hours in local time which is completely normal and expected because people working on it usually have same working hours all year around. And SS is important due to LFKC specifics and surrounding terrain.

Last Edited by Emir at 09 Oct 19:03
LDZA LDVA, Croatia

The VAC of Calvi LFKC specifies ATS hours as follows:

Is my following interpretation correct?

  • Summer: 0445 UTC – 1 hour offset → 0345 UTC → 0545 L
  • Winter: 0545 UTC → 0645 L
LFHN, LSGP, LFHM
25 Posts
Sign in to add your message

Back to Top