Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler - Delta Air Lines Schedule January 7 2004

Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler | Airline Operations | Delta Air Lines Schedule January 7 2004

DVA043
Senior Captain, MD-11
OLP

Joined on June 10 2001
Event Half Century Club
Online Double Century Club
50 State Club
DVA Twenty-Year Anniversary
Everett 1500 Club
Bi-Millennium Club
Four Million Mile Club

"Col. Panic"
Marietta, GA

2,347 legs, 9,466.0 hours
240 legs, 553.9 hours online
2,005 legs, 8,259.1 hours ACARS
75 legs, 196.3 hours event
2,383 legs, 9,600.9 hours total
91 legs dispatched, 66.4 hours

Posted onPost created on January 09 2004 17:44 ET by Luke Kolin

This weekend, I will be importing the new Delta Air Lines schedule, effective January 7th, 2004. I have been tweaking the import process and I believe I can get it to reliably import most flights. Based on what I've seen, we can reliably import over 6,500 flight legs from Delta, Air France, South African, Air Jamaica, Czech Air Lines and Korean Air Lines. The new schedule has forced me to add over 70 destinations to our airport list.

Some flights from the old schedule will remain. Some non-codeshare Air France flights will remain, as will all of the 8000-series "historic" flights. We are in the process of significantly expanding the flights we offer using retired aircraft, and I have asked Senior Captain Phil Rothberg to assist the DVA staff in this endeavour. Phil has been in contact with the MD-11 pilots, but we plan to extend this to the 727, the DC-3 and the CV-880 as well. I will personally be adding some Concorde services to Washington DC, Dallas, Mexico City, Caracas, Dakar and Rio de Janeiro over the next few days and weeks.

As I implied in an earlier post, there are some difficulties with the import. The times I extract from the PDF are 12 hour times, so I need to apply some rules to the times to try and guess (that's the EXACT term) if a time is AM or PM. About 98 or 99% of the time, I guess right, but there's times when I'll guess wrong. As always, the "real-world" DAL schedules will continue to be valid for flights, both PDF and electronic. However, our schedule will be the same as the PDF version most of the time going forward.

You will see some changes over the upcoming few days. First, I am going to be releasing all active flight assignments since they will no longer be backed by the underlying schedule. All that will remain are the 8000-series flights as well as some Air France non-codeshare flights. I am unsure if Flight Assignments will return in any meaningful way, since the schedule will change too often for them. Flight Assignments and bid sheets may turn out to be randomly generated based on an equipment type in the future - don't know. Suggestions are welcome.

Second, anything schedule related may be broken over the course of the weekend. Since the PIREP form pulls from the schedule, there may be the odd moments when it is broken or borked. Rest assured that I am sensitive of this and will attempt to minimize issues. If you get an error, it's most likely that a bug slipped out from my testing, and if you return 5 or 10 minutes later it will be fixed.

I am also creating a repository to archive old DAL PDF schedule that I use for import. Right now, there's not enough data to be valid, but the goal is to create a historical record of DAL schedules. If you have some old PDF schedules, send them to me and I'll be happy to add them.

Cheers!

Luke

Luke Kolin

Senior Captain, MD-11

DVA1271
Senior Captain, MD-11

Joined on June 27 2003
Double Century Club

Central America

234 legs, 910.2 hours

Posted onPost created on January 09 2004 18:09 ET by Rolando Alvarado-Scott

great job luke.. i love seeing that this airline is always getting better and better.. if there's anything you need that i can assist you on.. dont hesitate to ask..

and for my 2 cents.. i like the flight schedules.. about have my flights were from the flight schedules cause i think it makes it a little more realistic cause in real life you get assigned flights, you dont go where you wanna.. anyways i think as them as a plus..

PuRa ViDa

Rolando Alvarado-Scott (DVA1271)

DVA320
Senior Captain, B777-200
E-MAIL

Joined on September 22 2001
Online Double Century Club
Triple Century Club

Midwestern United States

365 legs, 1,242.5 hours
353 legs, 1,216.6 hours online
2 legs, 4.6 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on January 09 2004 18:44 ET by Awais Ahsan

I dont know but I think you must have heard this or atleast have a little clue about, Delta used to fly to OPKC Karachi city Pakistan, It was a old route served by Delta 747's do you think you can add it in or rather tell me the best you can do with it or maybe nothing at all, Thanks dude thanks!

Awais Ahsan (DVA320)

Posted onPost created on January 09 2004 19:01 ET by Luke Kolin

Don't thank me yet, Ronaldo. Your wonderful MD-11 and the 777 appear to be time machines - if you go from LAX to Narita, you'll arrive 12 hours before you left. smile

To be fair to myself, there are less than a dozen flights that fall into this category so I can tweak them easily. I don't have a specific time translation rule for trans-Pacific flights so I may need to add that next month. Right now the flights have been imported, there are no duplicates or obvious screwups, and all I have left is some last-minute tweaks.

On a related note, can anyone tell me if all of Mexico is one time zone?

Cheers!

Luke

Luke Kolin

Senior Captain, MD-11

Posted onPost created on January 09 2004 19:03 ET by Luke Kolin

Send an e-mail to Phil Rothberg. He's putting together the 8000-series flights and the 747-100 is part of that program.

Cheers!

Luke

Luke Kolin

Senior Captain, MD-11

DVA1044
Senior Captain, B767-300

Joined on January 12 2003
Century Club

"Fly Delta Jets"
Roswell, NM USA

127 legs, 388.8 hours
62 legs, 199.3 hours online
2 legs, 5.2 hours event

Posted onPost created on January 09 2004 19:05 ET by Lloyd Arms

According to Ask.com Mexico is on one time zone, However I cannot be certain of it yet. I'll look around further

Lloyd Arms (DVA1044)

DVA1044
Senior Captain, B767-300

Joined on January 12 2003
Century Club

"Fly Delta Jets"
Roswell, NM USA

127 legs, 388.8 hours
62 legs, 199.3 hours online
2 legs, 5.2 hours event

Posted onPost created on January 09 2004 19:06 ET by Lloyd Arms

Most of Mexico, including the states of Jalisco, Colima, and Oaxaca, is in the Central Time zone. Mexico uses daylight savings time in the summer.

Northern Baja California is on Pacific Time. BajaCalifornia Sur, Sonora, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, and Nayarit are on Mountain Time. In Mexico, however, Mountain Time is usually referred to as Pacific Time since most of these states border on the Pacific Ocean. Quintana Roo is on Eastern Time.

DST starts on Sunday May 6, 2001 at 2:00.00 AM local standard time and ends on Sunday September 30, 2001 at 2:00.00 AM local daylight time.

From another site

Lloyd Arms (DVA1044)

Posted onPost created on January 09 2004 19:11 ET by Luke Kolin

Do you have a map anywhere?

The reason I ask is that all of the DAL timetable times are local time. In order to calculate the proper length of the flight, I need to convert each time into the proper time zone, so the time zone for each airport in the database is a critical piece of information. I don't think I have some mexican airports right, because some flights appear to be landing as soon as they depart.

Cheers!

Luke

Luke Kolin

Senior Captain, MD-11

Posted onPost created on January 09 2004 19:13 ET by Luke Kolin

On another note, what timezone is Fort Wayne IN in?

Cheers!

Luke

Luke Kolin

Senior Captain, MD-11

DVA1044
Senior Captain, B767-300

Joined on January 12 2003
Century Club

"Fly Delta Jets"
Roswell, NM USA

127 legs, 388.8 hours
62 legs, 199.3 hours online
2 legs, 5.2 hours event

Posted onPost created on January 09 2004 19:16 ET by Lloyd Arms

Give me a couple minutes, I'll see what I can come up with

Lloyd Arms (DVA1044)

DVA1044
Senior Captain, B767-300

Joined on January 12 2003
Century Club

"Fly Delta Jets"
Roswell, NM USA

127 legs, 388.8 hours
62 legs, 199.3 hours online
2 legs, 5.2 hours event

Posted onPost created on January 09 2004 19:19 ET by Lloyd Arms

http://www.exxun.com/exon/rm_north_america.html

Lloyd Arms (DVA1044)

Posted onPost created on January 09 2004 19:22 ET by Awais Ahsan

http://paknews.com/main5apl-18.html If you find the time just glance at it Luke however yes I will send him an e-mail do you know what is his e-mail btw?

Awais Ahsan (DVA320)

Posted onPost created on January 09 2004 19:39 ET by Luke Kolin

I'm not easily seeing timezones here. I think Indiana on the World map is eastern.

Cheers!

Luke

Luke Kolin

Senior Captain, MD-11

DVA953
Senior Captain, B737-800
E-MAIL

Joined on November 17 2002
50 State Club
Double Century Club
Online Double Century Club

"V1 means V1..."
West Lafayette, IN USA

214 legs, 376.8 hours
211 legs, 373.0 hours online
117 legs, 223.6 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on January 09 2004 19:40 ET by James Brickell

pmr131 at aol dot com

James Brickell (DVA953)

DVA1044
Senior Captain, B767-300

Joined on January 12 2003
Century Club

"Fly Delta Jets"
Roswell, NM USA

127 legs, 388.8 hours
62 legs, 199.3 hours online
2 legs, 5.2 hours event

Posted onPost created on January 09 2004 19:48 ET by Lloyd Arms

Indiana is CST

Lloyd Arms (DVA1044)

Posted onPost created on January 09 2004 20:22 ET by James Brickell

Remember, they don't do Daylight Savings Time..I think.

James Brickell (DVA953)

DVA1339
Captain, CRJ-200

Joined on September 26 2003

Southeastern United States

69 legs, 182.6 hours
2 legs, 3.2 hours online

Posted onPost created on January 10 2004 05:10 ET by Brian Jesus

Really appreciate all of the work you are doing Luke. Keep up the awesome job!

Brian Jesus (DVA1339)

DVA1068
Senior Captain, B757-200

Joined on February 03 2003
Double Century Club

Midwestern United States

223 legs, 482.4 hours
13 legs, 23.0 hours online
1 legs, 1.7 hours event

Posted onPost created on January 10 2004 06:10 ET by Cody Martin

Indiana is weird. I think about half is eastern and half is central.

Cody Martin (DVA1068)

Posted onPost created on January 10 2004 06:49 ET by Luke Kolin

OK, this should be a great reference. Thanks everyone.

http://www.worldtimezone.com/time-us12.html

Cheers!

Luke

Luke Kolin

Senior Captain, MD-11

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