BA Winter timetables.

[Mallorcaguy]

Can anyone tell me for sure when the Winter timetables come into effect at BA.
I thought it was the end of October, but I was told today that the winter timetables come into effect this weekend.

Thanks.

[BAladdy]

The W13/14 schedule comes into effect on Sunday 27th October and will run through until Saturday 29th March.

[DaveReidUK]

I thought it was the end of October, but I was told today that the winter timetables come into effect this weekend.

There's no way BA could change wholesale to their winter programme at the end of September. The winter schedule, for long-haul in particular, is based on the fact that UK Summer Time finishes at the end of October so that many timings have to change then, particularly to/from Far East countries that don't use DST.

[WHBM]

The days of "winter" and "summer" timetables have passed, and airlines plan to make much more frequent changes to their schedules nowadays to suit demand.

However the main changes still take place at the last weekend of October, when the clocks change in the UK, but not in every country, leading to the need to make schedule changes to many services to still fit the slots at Heathrow and elsewhere. For various reasons you can't just switch to one hour later in places overseas that don't change their clocks.

The whole world which changed their clocks (generally the countries nearer the poles; equatorial countries do not do so) used to do so on this October weekend, a standardisation which the ICAO (part of the UN) carefully engineered over time, but a couple of years ago the USA decided to break away from this standard, and they now do so at the first weekend in November, meaning much headache making things fit, and disrupting a number of connections in the intervening week, and requiring changes at both weekends.

[Mallorcaguy]

Thanks for the replies. I wanted to visit my wife in Ukraine but looking at the timetable and online booking the timetable changes from twice a day on Sun, Mon, Wed, Thu and Fri to once a day from 12 October, I assume the route LHR - KBP demand drops early in October and the new timetable for that route takes effect earlier than others. Oh well looks like I will have to change my plans and go another time.

Thanks again.

[DaveReidUK]

but a couple of years ago the USA decided to break away from this standard

It only seems yesterday that the USA unilaterally changed their DST start/end dates, but in fact it's been that way for 6 years now, since 2007.

As I recall, at the time it caused no end of problems for the airlines and GDSs.