Originally Posted by
DaveReidUK
It's worse than that.
The Vincennes did indeed have a flight schedule showing departures from Bandar Abbas, but the US crew failed to take into account the difference between Iranian local time and the time zone that the ship was using. This, combined with a 27 minute delay to IR655's departure, led to the incorrect conclusion that no commercial flight could be expected to be over the area at the time in question.
Clearly they had no experience with scheduled flights not operating quite to time then. Maybe in the US that never happens ....
As I understand it the flight was spot on. The 27 minutes was the difference between gate closed (scheduled departure) and liftoff from the runway (ATC recorded time). Pretty normal.