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> Flight arrival and departure times As a former commercial pilot, we use UTC exclusively when flight planning and reporting waypoints - no matter where we are

> Flight arrival and departure times As a former commercial pilot, we use UTC exclusively when flight planning and reporting waypoints - no matter where we are in the world. When I report that we expect to reach waypoint 'X' at 0451, then anybody listening in ANYWHERE in the world knows exactly how long before I get there, or how long overdue I am. No ambiguity whatsoever. To this day, in my new life as a developer, I ensure that all my servers are set to UTC and I always use UTC as my time reference datum.

TorKlingberg 10y ago
Yes, but if you want passengers to show up on time you better tell them the local time.
- cyberferret 10y ago
  Ah, that is a problem for Operations! :P But honestly, when I was first learning to fly, it was a difficult thing to get used to. Like most pilots back then, I got one of those watches with two faces and set one (usually the primary/largest one) to UTC. After getting used to dealing purely in UTC for a while, I was amazed that more people didn't do it. I stopped looking at time as being defined by the position of the sun, but as a reference datum. If a colleague called out "See you at the pub at oh-two hundred hours", I never thought "2 in the morning??" but rather "Oh, that is 1 hour and 45 minutes from now - cool!".
mark-r 10y ago
You're extremely lucky. Most of us have to deal with the fact that people are more interested in local time than some idealized time.
- cyberferret 10y ago
  Good point, and it is also a reason why we used 'humanised time' in our apps where possible, i.e. the old "you posted this 7 minutes ago" rather than "you posted this at 07:35" because it gives the same datum no matter where our users are. But even now when we schedule meetings with (IT) colleagues in other countries, I will always reiterate/exchange the meeting times in UTC so that there is no confusion at all when we start the sessions.
nerdponx 10y ago
I know this is totally off-topic, but I'd love to hear about how and why you transitioned from pilot to developer.

TorKlingberg 10y ago

Yes, but if you want passengers to show up on time you better tell them the local time.

cyberferret 10y ago
Ah, that is a problem for Operations! :P But honestly, when I was first learning to fly, it was a difficult thing to get used to. Like most pilots back then, I got one of those watches with two faces and set one (usually the primary/largest one) to UTC. After getting used to dealing purely in UTC for a while, I was amazed that more people didn't do it. I stopped looking at time as being defined by the position of the sun, but as a reference datum. If a colleague called out "See you at the pub at oh-two hundred hours", I never thought "2 in the morning??" but rather "Oh, that is 1 hour and 45 minutes from now - cool!".

mark-r 10y ago

You're extremely lucky. Most of us have to deal with the fact that people are more interested in local time than some idealized time.

cyberferret 10y ago
Good point, and it is also a reason why we used 'humanised time' in our apps where possible, i.e. the old "you posted this 7 minutes ago" rather than "you posted this at 07:35" because it gives the same datum no matter where our users are. But even now when we schedule meetings with (IT) colleagues in other countries, I will always reiterate/exchange the meeting times in UTC so that there is no confusion at all when we start the sessions.

nerdponx 10y ago

I know this is totally off-topic, but I'd love to hear about how and why you transitioned from pilot to developer.