Extension of Daylight Savings Time strongly opposed by airlines, will affect controllers too
A federal energy bill signed into law in August includes a provision to extend Daylight Saving Time by four weeks, starting in 2007. The airlines have registered some of the strongest opposition to the extension, saying it would disrupt carefully timed schedules and cost them millions of dollars in lost revenue from international travel. NATCA members at facilities that handle a large volume of international flights say they expect a noticeable impact, but not a major problem.
The extension will create a month in which U.S. airlines say they won’t be able to properly synchronize flights with international airports, which will lead to passengers facing “connection times that are either an extra hour in length or impossibly short,” according to the Air Transport Association, the airlines’ lobbying group.
An American Airlines spokesman told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that there may be scheduling problems with international flights. “If our Daylight Saving Time in the United States does not match up with other countries, we might be faced with an uncompetitive position,” the spokesman said.
Los Angeles International Airport Tower Facility Representative Mike Foote said the change “will make our midnight shift busier because the overseas traffic will last an hour longer. We have a lot of overseas departures until about 1 a.m., with mostly international cargo after that. Most of the arrivals are domestic, but we do get a few flights from Central America between midnight and 2 a.m.”
But despite the increase in overseas traffic, Foote doesn’t foresee significant complications arising from the extension of Daylight Savings Time. “It is not something that would make much difference to us,” he concluded. “We’ll just stay busier later.”
The issue isn’t so simple for controllers across all time zones, however. When a facility that does not participate in Daylight Saving Time is in close proximity to a region that does, controlling the traffic between the two can be complicated. Puerto Rico, for example, does not participate in Daylight Saving Time, but its controllers still have to be observant of Eastern Daylight Time in the United States. As San Juan CERAP (ZSU) Facility Representative Jerry Nash notes, “the change of an hour, if only for a month, will have a significant impact on us. Our staffing requirements will be altered and, likewise, our working conditions.”
The conflict stems from the fact that it’s essentially always Daylight Saving Time in Puerto Rico, which is located in the Atlantic Time Zone, one hour behind Eastern Standard Time. From April to October, though the clocks in Puerto Rico don’t “spring back” with the eastern United States, Nash notes that the time change requires adjustments in the area controllers’ schedules. “Our peak traffic period changes by an hour to match U.S. Eastern Daylight Time. However, the FAA doesn’t re-staff or alter our schedules to meet the spike in traffic.”
“So you have two guys that have worked their midnight shift all night by themselves,” he continues. “And then at 5 a.m., at the very end of their long shift, they are facing a traffic push from all of the down islands in the region to get the passengers to San Juan to make the flights to the United States.”
Perhaps the most irksome effect an extra month of Daylight Saving Time will have on ZSU controllers, Nash said—tongue in cheek— is on their ability to watch NFL football. Games will start at 1 p.m. local time instead of 2 p.m., and controllers who work a day shift will miss more of the early games than when the rest of the country “falls back” to standard time.
