Ops Desk

Time flies!

Same as everywhere else in the military, aviation uses the 24 hour clock to eliminate translation errors in A.M. vs P.M., but aviation goes one step further by using what is refer to as either GMT, UTC, or simply Zulu. 

Using Zulu or "Z time" condenses a world of time zones and messy geographical boundaries in to essentially one "time zone", that of the time along the Prime Meridian which happens to run Greenwich, England, which is where we get Greenwich Mean Time or GMT. (UTC, Coordinated Universal Time which is the English translation, is based on the atomic clock and likewise uses the Prime Meridian as its base.) So Zulu is the same no mater where you are in the world, you simply have to convert Zulu to the local time zone where you are. 

PST Pacific Standard Time + 8 hours = Zulu

PDT Pacific Daylight Saving Time + 7 hours = Zulu

(The conversion can get tricky, and we most commonly see this when interpreting NOTAMs, when we deal a Z time that it is after midnight and we notice that the date is for the next day.)   

Give 'em an inch, and they take a mile!

In aviation we use nautical miles to measure distances versus the statute mile used when you drive on the highway. A nautical mile is equal to length of one minute of latitude. To convert statue miles to nautical miles, divide statue miles by 1.15078. 

1 [statue] mile = 0.868976 nautical mile

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