How hard is it to ensure flight times take daylight savings ending into account?

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Rebekkap

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I flew LAX-MEL on Good Friday, arriving MEL Sunday morning. I was lucky to catch the flight - if I hadn't wanted to be early at the airport to check out the new first class lounge, I would have missed it. Why? Because Qantas apparently can't get their act together when it comes to daylight savings ending. My eticket - a partial screenshot attached - said the flight left at 11.30pm. It didn't - it left at 10.30pm. At no point did Qantas bother to notify me there had been a time change. The wrong time caused trouble at the MEL end where I had organised to be picked up - from a flight landing at 8.30am, not 7.30am. Because waiting for an hour at the airport is really what you want to do when you get off a 15 hour flight. Poor form, Qantas. Even poorer form is that I emailed customer service 12 days ago to express my extreme displeasure at the whole thing and haven't yet heard back. Although considering I am still chasing a points claim for points earned on 10 January, which I have now discussed with them three times, and a fourth email sent today, I suppose 12 days is really not *that* bad. Honestly, I usually defend Qantas - I love flying with them - but I'm feeling really disappointed with the total lack of customer service when not in the air. I'm WP - you'd think that would at least warrant a "we're looking into it" response.
 

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What exactly does this have to do with Daylight Savings? I'd imagine they rescheduled the flight at some point after you booked it and just didn't let you know. It's why I always double check my flight times online before I travel.
 
What exactly does this have to do with Daylight Savings? I'd imagine they rescheduled the flight at some point after you booked it and just didn't let you know. It's why I always double check my flight times online before I travel.
They told me on board that the flight times were different because of the changeover from daylight savings time. Generally when the reschedule flights even by a few minutes there are auto-emails generated by the system - I've had a multitude of them over the years, even when flights have changed by five or ten minutes. It's automatic, and given it didn't happen in this case and they told me the flight times move by an hour when daylight savings ends, I think I'm justified in assuming this has something to do with daylight savings!
 

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This issue is not being notified of a time change. That happens whether daylight savings is involved or not. I've certainly had time changes in the past that haven't been notified by Qantas (or other airlines).
 
Thanks for explaining to me what my issue is, but as I was actually told that the flight times shift an hour when daylight savings ends, I'm not sure why you are arguing that that's not the issue. I have always been notified before when there's been a change of time - even as little as 5 or 10 minutes. I don't think it's acceptable in this case that I wasn't. I strongly suspect - and you have posted nothing to suggest otherwise - that the issue is caused by the time change. The example above was a shift of 10 minutes. Here it is again with a snip of the original itinerary. If the Qantas system generates auto-emails for a ten minute change, I can't see why it wouldn't for an hour change - except that the system has shifted to off daylight savings time, so it doesn't think it's a flight time change.
 

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I'd assume the airlines systems run on GMT and so should recognize a change in time due to daylight savings... Who knows.
 
I flew QF94 on April 9th (booked in November!) and departure time always showed as 22.50 PDT.
 
I flew QF94 on April 9th (booked in November!) and departure time always showed as 22.50 PDT.

Yes, I don't think the problem happened because I booked it on daylight savings time and flew when it wasn't, I think the problem happened because it was the day of the changeover - ie the Friday when I left LA was still daylight savings time, and the Sunday when I landed in Melbourne was no longer daylight savings.
 
Yes, I don't think the problem happened because I booked it on daylight savings time and flew when it wasn't, I think the problem happened because it was the day of the changeover - ie the Friday when I left LA was still daylight savings time, and the Sunday when I landed in Melbourne was no longer daylight savings.

When did you originally book your flights (ie. which month did you book them)? There was a major realignment of the way QF rotated their A380s that was announced middle of last year (IIRC announced in May, but timetable changes not made for a while after that), which meant that QF 94 had to leave LAX earlier to get into MEL and turn around and go back to LAX. This meant departure times from LAX were shifted forward around 40-60 mins, which had nothing to do with daylight savings. I suspect you may have missed being sent or receiving this notification.

Also, to sit back and apply some logic to this .... if you were originally scheduled to arrive at 23:30 and arrive at 8:30 but instead the flight was retimed to leave at 22:30 and arrive at 7:30, it would seem both arrival and departure one hour earlier this means the daylight savings change had nothing to do with it. If daylight savings was the problem then there would be a one hour discrepancy. From the crew perspective, who probably regularly do these flights, they would have noticed the earlier arrival (22:30 departure, 07:30 arrival instead of 22:30 departure, 08:30 arrival), but individual passengers would not notice this unless booked regularly on the service.

Lastly, a learning/suggestion about pick up, although you may have done this and it was already too late to re-organise the pickup, but I'm being picked up in the morning (or in fact anytime) after a med-long haul flight, I suggest whoever is picking me up, before they go to bed, to check a suitable website to check the flight (such as airline website, Melbourne airport website, or even apps/websites that track flights such as flightaware or flightradar24) for a revised arrival time. If the flight is delayed then they can get some extra sleep!
 
You're not alone - I have noticed in Amadeus recently that incorrect times are being published in the GDS for a number of QF flights. As a result the flight duration is also showing incorrect durations, such as 17h55m for QF8 DFW-SYD (should be 16h55m) and 12h45m for QF11 SYD-LAX (should be 13h45m).
 
You're not alone - I have noticed in Amadeus recently that incorrect times are being published in the GDS for a number of QF flights. As a result the flight duration is also showing incorrect durations, such as 17h55m for QF8 DFW-SYD (should be 16h55m) and 12h45m for QF11 SYD-LAX (should be 13h45m).
And MEL-BNE is listed as 1hxxm...
 
The early arrival not should not be because of daylight saving because the ticketed arrival time would have already allowed for it. The early arrival was simply because the plane left an hour early.

As stated above QF 94 currently departs at 22.50. A dummy booking shows that in Oct/Nov it will still depart then but the scheduled (to be ticketed) arrival times change on both the Australian and the American day light savings weekends (they are different W ends). It also happens going the other way. The departure time prevails and the arrival times change. Logical I suppose from a timetabling point of view.

However it's easy to speculate from my comfortable armchair. It is the OP who had the inconvenience and received no notice of a change.
 
When did you originally book your flights (ie. which month did you book them)? There was a major realignment of the way QF rotated their A380s that was announced middle of last year (IIRC announced in May, but timetable changes not made for a while after that), which meant that QF 94 had to leave LAX earlier to get into MEL and turn around and go back to LAX. This meant departure times from LAX were shifted forward around 40-60 mins, which had nothing to do with daylight savings. I suspect you may have missed being sent or receiving this notification.

Also, to sit back and apply some logic to this .... if you were originally scheduled to arrive at 23:30 and arrive at 8:30 but instead the flight was retimed to leave at 22:30 and arrive at 7:30, it would seem both arrival and departure one hour earlier this means the daylight savings change had nothing to do with it. If daylight savings was the problem then there would be a one hour discrepancy. From the crew perspective, who probably regularly do these flights, they would have noticed the earlier arrival (22:30 departure, 07:30 arrival instead of 22:30 departure, 08:30 arrival), but individual passengers would not notice this unless booked regularly on the service.

Lastly, a learning/suggestion about pick up, although you may have done this and it was already too late to re-organise the pickup, but I'm being picked up in the morning (or in fact anytime) after a med-long haul flight, I suggest whoever is picking me up, before they go to bed, to check a suitable website to check the flight (such as airline website, Melbourne airport website, or even apps/websites that track flights such as flightaware or flightradar24) for a revised arrival time. If the flight is delayed then they can get some extra sleep!

Booked 29 June 2014. Good point re telling my lift to check flight times - never occurred to me to tell him as I would always check myself and so assumed he would too! Will point this out in future :)
 
You're not alone - I have noticed in Amadeus recently that incorrect times are being published in the GDS for a number of QF flights. As a result the flight duration is also showing incorrect durations, such as 17h55m for QF8 DFW-SYD (should be 16h55m) and 12h45m for QF11 SYD-LAX (should be 13h45m).

That's even stranger then!
 
I've noticed over several years that if I have a flight on the weekend that daylight saving either starts or finishes, it is almost inevitable that its timing will be changed. However I have always at least been notified!

It's not just QF, many airlines appear to feel the need to make late timetable changes due to daylight saving. Not sure why they can't work this out earlier. It's not like it comes as a surprise to them.
 
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I think retiming occurred sometime during July, if I remember correctly. The 23:30 departure was moved to 22:50. It seems you didn't get notification of this change.
Definitely no notification. I use gmail as my primary email, I check the spam folder every day - no email from Qantas about time changes!
 
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