On 2025-03-25 13:41, Dale Ghent via tz wrote:
On Mar 25, 2025, at 14:50, Brian Inglis via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
On 2025-03-25 11:54, Paul Gilmartin via tz wrote:
On 3/25/25 11:40, Brian Inglis via tz wrote:
They have to provide substantial notice to IATA about time changes, and are fined millions if they make late changes, ... What entity imposes such a fine?
See late cancellation by Egypt in 2016 where they paid $8M to IATA:
https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/232511/Egypt/Politics-/Travell...
https://codeofmatt.com/time-zone-chaos-inevitable-in-egypt/
also discussion here on list.
Wow. IANAL, but I /think/ there's a pretty big difference between the IATA and the IANA, though. IATA certification of a country's airports is a regulatory affair. They require fees and dues of its members. There are rules to follow and they are spelled out. If one does something that causes the IATA certificates to lapse or be revoked/suspended, then commercial air carriers will stop using the airports because, I am told, insurance will stop covering those flights. I imagine that's just the start of a list of pretty undesirable effects such as happening would have.
In the above article, EgyptAir expected to lose $2M, as would any other (mainly Arabic/Middle Eastern) airline or travel services doing a lot of business in Egypt, and the impacts from all the missed connections, plus energy businesses with cables or pipes terminating in Egypt who missed delivery deadlines (could possibly claim "force majeur" depending on Ts&Cs), plus all their upstream and downstream businesses impacted. Not to mention all the IT teams in every business in or doing business with the country scrambling to un/make last minute changes to scheduling and time management systems. Luckily, most sane time keeping and distribution systems use UTC, so *only* systems using local times are impacted! ;^>
IANA is not that kind of entity. From what I can tell, neither is PTI or even ICANN for that matter. One does not enter into any kind of contractual or enforceable agreement, certainly not as far as timezone-related business is concerned. In this regard, IANA TZDB is more of a service; a clearinghouse of information that is /de facto/ canonical for computing-related timezone information.
It would be nice if we could persuade ICANN that, like IATA, they should fine ccTLDs millions if they do not provide adequate notice of time changes to this project. ;^>
I think a more realistic strategy would be to make the technical process of implementing timezone adjustments more visible and understandable. It would include a clearer framework for government representatives to *proactively* inform the TZDB group and coordinators of any pending changes once the relevant law/edict/whatever has been finalized. There's a lot that would go into such an effort and would be impossible to summarize succinctly here. The current IANA TZDB website doesn't really say much beyond "we exist" which, I feel, doesn't help when it comes to expediently getting changes published, integrated into any given OS's patch cycle, distributed, and applied. We are, like many open source projects, an unfunded volunteer project, with zero advertising or communications or anything else staff or budget.
It might not be too hard to accomplish something, if we could get IANA to pass along to *ALL* ICANN and ccTLD reps that time zones and summer times are part of their countries' critical business and economic (and political, affecting reputation of the government and the country) infrastructure and need to be notified as urgently as the air and travel industry orgs of any time changes ASAP. Contributors have *strongly* suggested to government staff who posted here, that they should add this list to their contacts for IATA and other air and travel orgs to be notified when any time changes are decided. -- Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada La perfection est atteinte Perfection is achieved non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter not when there is no more to add mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retrancher but when there is no more to cut -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry