[Anonymous]

[TominScotland]

I am sure many of us come across daft things when travelling! Just glanced up at the flight departures board at HKIA which shows LX139, due out at 00.00, as estimated 23.59!! Reminds me of asking the time of the next train from Geneva Airport to Lausanne and being told that it was at 8.31. “Oh”, I said, “in 10 minutes”. “No”, came the reply, “in 11 minutes”. Ah, Swiss precision……

[continentalclub]

The Hong Kong situation may in fact be part of a well-versed protocol to reduce confusion amongst passengers. It’s not so much the single minute’s variance that’s relevant, so much as the additional clarity that the ETA brings with it (bearing in mind that that data also shows online, in ‘manage my booking’ feeds etc., etc.)

In the past, countless passengers missed flights (or turned up a day early) because they mistook midnight (or minutes past it) for the wrong end of the day.

For example, and rather like Eats, Shoots and Leaves: 12 minutes past Midnight on Wednesday can, depending on grammar and even intonation, actually be 00:12 Wednesday or 00:12 on Thursday.

However, 12 minutes to Midnight on Wednesday is (almost) never misunderstood.

So, history shows that 23:XX published departure times (even more so than 00:XX times) are more reliably understood by passengers, even when the actual departure time is post-Midnight.

It’s not the airport that’s absurd. It’s the passengers……!

[PaulJennings]

Indeed. Only last week a well-travelled colleague turned up at the airport at around 22.00 on Wednesday night, not in good time for his flight at 00.40 on Wednesday. On this occasion the travel agent had compounded the error by making the hotel reservation for a “departure on Wednesday”.

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

It is really quite easy.

00:00 = 12am

Anything from 00:00 to 23:59 is in the same day.

It’s not the passengers who are absurd, it is those people who cannot use the 24 hour clock who are absurd.

But then again, they probably don’t like the euro and think fog in the channel = Europe cut off 😉

The only time I ever have to think seriously, is when confronted by the am/pm system when travelling, where it is easy to confuse 06:49pm as 06:49 9am)

[FlyingChinaman]

Disgustedofswieqi

I totally agree with you the 24-hour system is the most accurate timing.

I prided myself as a world traveller since age 10 and yet I went to SFO airport last month at 9 a.m for an actual flight departing at 10:30 P.M. as I misread the AM/PM stuff. It would never have happened to me had the airline used a 24-hour system!!! Unfortunately all US carriers are programmed to the AM/PM as the American public don’t understand the 24-hour principle and non-American travellers can sometimes been caught with the 12-hour system when they are not careful. Definately not one of my brightest moment!

I now write out in ink the departure time with a 24-hour defination on my e-ticket paper print-out so as to prevent stupid mistakes in the future!

[lloydah]

Now I’m even more confused. The day starts at a minute after midnight so 00:00 cannot be 12am, it has to be 12midnight doesn’t it? I’ve never heard of anyone calling midnight 12am. I suppose it’s because midnight and noon are in common usage in the English language to avoid confusion. And maybe now isn’t the time to be thinking that anyone likes the Euro.

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

“Now I’m even more confused”

No need to be confused.

The day ends as the 59th second of the 59th minute of the 23rd hour completes, at which stage the first second of the new day starts. That is 23:59 becomes 00:00.

When the euro launched, it bought 57.5p, now it buys 85p.

Some of us like the euro.

[Eltomzo]

It’s very simple: the first minute of the day is 0000, and so 0000 is when the day starts. 2359 is the last minute of the previous day. Midnight comes at the start – not the end – of each day.

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

FlyingChinaman

I did the same thing, in Brasil, 2 years ago 🙁

[FlyingChinaman]

DisgustedofSwieqi

You have restored my confidence by hearing that I am not the “only” foolish seasoned traveller!!!

[DisgustedofSwieqi]

Yep, still learning about travelling, after 32 years doing it on business 😉

[FlyingChinaman]

Yes, one live and learn. Hopefully we all be getting wiser!

[TominScotland]

Thanks, all, for your explanations. If this is the case, why don’t they post the flight as 23.59 in the first place (as they would in the US)?

[continentalclub]

Aha, but they wouldn’t do that in the US, TominScotland; they’d post it as 11:59P, which is what (in part) leads to all those Ameri…I mean passengers…..getting confused about the 24-hour clock and turning up on the wrong day for 00:XX departures :-).

I take your point about posting to-the-single-minute timings though, it’s just that this is also a rather peculiar Americanism. Almost nowhere else in the World does this, preferring to stick to a to-the-five-minute convention.

LX139 is something of an exception to this from Hong Kong however, and is posted to depart at the to-the-minute time of 23:59. I’m not sure where you’ve got the 00:00 timing from though, as that doesn’t seem to appear anywhere in the schedules or reporting systems. Perhaps a travel agent has rounded-up?

Why is it not 00:00? Well, I presume that SWISS want to avoid the ‘Midnight Madness’ issues posted above. Why is it not 23:55? I can only speculate that the airport/ATC weren’t able to accomodate that STD.

And so a compromise was reached.

Now, if only America would write dates the right way around too….

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