In passing, I’ll often talk about IATA summer and winter schedules, though it occurred to me that I’ve never written in detail about what those are, and why people should care. For airlines, there are two key dates every year that have a big impact on network planning, so let me explain what those dates…
Continue reading: IATA Summer & Winter Airline Schedules: What Are They, Why Should You Care?
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The IATA schedule change in season is more about airports with slot assignments, rather than anything else. There are normally twice yearly meetings to assign slots for all carriers where needed. Once slots are assigned, there is a series of trading and batting beaten carriers. This normally happens three months in advance.
U.S. carriers fret the most over this because the change to/from “Day Light Savings” in the U.S. is normally a week later than the rest of the world, (Imagine that).
Not sure I understand what you’re talking about anymore after having read this
Stvr - But do you need to understand this any more than you currently do?
This post would only be useful if there was a suggestion on how to use seasonal schedules to game flight schedule changes so you can rebook a cheaper flight.
Stvr - But do you need to understand this any more than you currently do?
This post would only be useful if there was a suggestion on how to use seasonal schedules to game flight schedule changes so you can rebook a cheaper flight.
“The summer season runs from the last Sunday in March until the last Saturday in October”
No
The summer season runs from the last Sunday in March until the day before the last Sunday in October. The point here is that the last Saturday in October in a year could be Sat Oct 31, in which case the last Sunday in October would be Sun Oct 25 and the summer season would run to Sat Oct 24, not Sat Oct 31.
Similarly with the winter season
I never knew this about summer and winter schedules but I can see how it affected an upcoming trip I have. I purchased codeshare tickets through American Airlines a couple months ago for a flight from LAX to LHR to LIN all on British Air metal (and returning through JFK on American metal). Two weeks ago I checked my flights and found that the LAX to LHR flight had been completely eliminated from BA's schedule. Now I understand that this elimination had to do with the winter schedule change. I had to scramble as British Air denied any responsibility for finding an alternative telling me that AA was responsible because it was a codeshare. Ultimately AA found me space on their own LAX to LHR flight the following day. This experience now makes me wary of codeshare flights and early November flights due to winter schedule changes.
I have Palma as my second airport based and the winter/summer schedule not only makes the schedule different, but we literally closed a full terminal. (Module A)
A lot of airlines also use it for their flight planning so that 8 hour flight in the summer could becomes a 8:30 or 7:30 flight to adjust for the difference in winter/summer winds.
And you also have those weird couple weeks when transatlantic flight schedules are different because North America and Europe switch on/off of Daylight Savings Time on different weekends. It's a headache since schedules have to be optimized around connection banks and slots on both sides of the Atlantic (for example, to maintain an LHR slot, an ORD-LHR flight would leave an hour later than usual)...
Lucky, you didn’t explain why airlines change the dep. time to an hour later. Hence arrival is affect by .. 1 hour.
Look at KLM 835/836 & write another article, will ya?
For sector SIN DPS, it used to depart at 4:40pm, now in winter it is 5:40pm.
Same for the return DPS SIN, 8:40pm vs now 9:40pm & we get into Singapore after midnight or after 1am if there is a delay (there usually is).
It then affects the flight from SIN AMS as well. Departing way later past 2am or even 3am!
It can’t be due to daylight savings time, right?