Flight results timezone issue from UK

FlightAware AeroAPI
1

Hi guys I’m from the UK.

When using the API we are getting different flight times to those shown on the actual carriers website.

Are the flight date and times returned with the US timezone? The times seem about 6.5 hours off the stated carrier pages website.

E.g. Monarch airlines - Manchester(UK) to Barcelona(Spain) is showing the correct date 1st August but time is returning back as 15:00 when on the Monarch airline the same flight is showing as 08:00.

Any help would be much appreciated :slight_smile:

Thanks

2

Can anyone help with this?

3

All times returned through FlightXML are expressed in UTC epoch seconds. If you need times expressed in local airport times, you will need to apply timezone correction according to either the origin or the destination airport. You can use the “AirportInfo” FlightXML function to look up the timezone identifier for either the origin or destination and then use your OS or programming language specific method for converting timezones.

If you believe just a specific flight has incorrect timestamps, please list the specific faFlightID or ident so that I can investigate further.

4

Hi thanks for your reply.

I understand that the times are being returned UTC epoch seconds and am using this for start and end date as required by the API.

What I need to know is what timezone the flight departure and arrival times being retuned for? I need to know this so that I can run the conversion to our local time?

We are based in the UK if this makes any difference?

E.g. a flight is being returned as 14:00 by the API (from the UK) but on the Airline website (from the UK) that particular flight is scheduled to leave at 08:00 (UK time).

In order to work this out I need to know what timezone the times are being returned from by the API. It looks like most flights we have checked are -6hours difference?

An example for one of the flights:

{“ident”:“MON516”,“actual_ident”:“”,“departuretime”:1438351200,“arrivaltime”:1438359600,“origin”:“EGCC”,“destination”:“LEBL”,“aircrafttype”:“A320”,“meal_service”:“”,“seats_cabin_first”:0,“seats_cabin_business”:0,“seats_cabin_coach”:180}

The departure time is being returned as 14:00 but it should be 08:00

5

Can you try looking at flights that do not involve Manchester? I have an unconfirmed suspicion that there might be a timezone issue with that one airport in particular.

6

Okay so I have checked Gatwick, Luton and Heathrow and the flights are returning the correct times. I think you are right and Manchester airport has a timezone issue.

Are you able to fix this?

I will update you if I find anymore UK airports with timezone issues.

Thanks

7

I believe the fix for those Manchester flights should now be visible on our production data systems.