Chatham Islands* — Page 414, Lesson 371

We are looking at the second half of a world time-zone table, and I want to walk you through how to read it, because this is exactly the kind of reference you will use operationally. The table lists countries and territories, and the number next to each one is the number of hours that location is fast on UTC — that is, ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. So when you see "New Zealand 12," it means New Zealand local time is UTC plus 12 hours. When you see "Niger 01," that is UTC plus one hour. Now, watch the half-hour and three-quarter-hour offsets, because those are easy to misread. Nepal is 05 45, meaning UTC plus five hours and forty-five minutes. The Maldives are 05, but Sri Lanka is 05 30. The Nicobar Islands are 05 30, and the Chatham Islands — which is the first entry on this page — is 12 45, so UTC plus twelve hours and forty-five minutes. That is a very unusual offset, and you must be precise with it. Notice the asterisks. Many entries have an asterisk, and the footnote at the bottom says: "Summer time may be kept in these countries." So an asterisk means that country may shift its clocks forward during summer time, and the listed value is the standard time. For example, Spain has an asterisk, Lebanon has an asterisk, and the Soviet Union zones have asterisks. Now, there are also numbered footnotes that apply to specific entries. The number 1 appears next to Marshall Islands, and the footnote says: "Except the islands of Kwajalein and Eniwetok which keep a time 24h slow on that of the rest of the islands." So the Marshall Islands are normally UTC plus 12, but those two specific islands are a full 24 hours behind the rest of the group. The number 2 appears next to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and that footnote says: "The boundaries between the zones are irregular; listed are towns in each zone." So the USSR is not a single time zone — it is split into ten zones, and the table lists representative towns for each. Let me walk you through those Soviet zones, because they are a good example of how the table handles a large country. Zone 1 is 03, and the towns are Amderma, Arkhangelsk, Kiev, Leningrad, Moscow, and Odessa. Zone 2 is 04, with Baku, Tbilisi, and Volgograd. Zone 3 is 05, with Ashkabad, Novyy Port, and Sverdlovsk. Zone 4 is 06, with Alma-Ata, Omsk, and Tashkent. Zone 5 is 07, with Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk. Zone 6 is 08, with Irkutsk. Zone 7 is 09, with Tiksi and Yakutsk. Zone 8 is 10, with Khabarovsk, Okhotsk, and Vladivostok. Zone 9 is 11, with Magadan and Sakhalin Island. Zone 10 is 12, with Anadyr and Petropavlovsk. There is also a footnote 3 that appears on the previous page, referring to Germany, which says "Including West Berlin." And footnote 4 refers to Kiribati, saying that Kiritimati Island and the Phoenix Islands keep 10h and 11h slow on UT — that is, behind UTC, not ahead. Now, let me point out a few specific entries that are easy to confuse. There are two Christmas-related entries: Christmas Island, Indian Ocean, is 07, and Cocos Keeling Islands is 06 30. There is also a distinction between Madagascar, Democratic Republic of, at 03, and the Maldives at 05. And note that Norfolk Island is 11 30, while New Caledonia is 11 and New Zealand is 12. Also, watch the African entries carefully. The Congo Republic is 01, but Zaire is split: Kinshasa and Mbandaka are 01, while Haut-Zaire, Kasai, Kivu, and Shaba are 02. Similarly, South West Africa (Namibia) is 02, and there is a separate entry for Namibia (South West Africa) also at 02. Finally, I want to emphasize the practical point. When you are planning a flight, you will use this table to convert between UTC and local time at your destination. The number tells you how many hours to add to UTC to get local standard time. And you must always check the footnotes, because an asterisk means summer time may shift that value, and the numbered footnotes flag exceptions like Kwajalein and Eniwetok. That is the difference between being on time and being an hour — or in the Chatham Islands' case, forty-five minutes — off.