Countries generally to the east of the Greenwich meridian — Page 402, Lesson 358

We’re moving into the Air Almanac extract now — the part where you actually look up time corrections for different countries. This is a working tool, so I want you to think of it as three lists, each covering a different part of the world. List 1 covers countries generally to the east of the Greenwich meridian. That’s the key phrase — east of Greenwich. For those countries, the Standard Time will be “fast” on UTC. Let me unpack that. UTC is Co-ordinated Universal Time — the world’s time reference, essentially what used to be called Greenwich Mean Time. If a country is east of Greenwich, the Sun rises there earlier, so their clocks are ahead — their Standard Time is later than UTC. That’s what “fast” means here: the clock reads a later time than UTC. The note under the title tells you exactly how to apply the corrections. The time corrections given in List 1 should be added to UTC to give Standard Time, or subtracted from Standard Time to give UTC. So if you know UTC and you want the local Standard Time for a country east of Greenwich, you add the correction. If you know the Standard Time and you want UTC, you subtract the correction. That’s the whole relationship — one direction adds, the other subtracts. Now, a practical wrinkle. Countries with a large east-west extent may be subdivided. Australia is the classic example — its Standard Time corrections change depending on the state involved. So the correction for New South Wales is different from Western Australia. And here’s the exam-relevant point: EASA questions about countries like Australia will specify the state involved. So you won’t be left guessing — the question will tell you which state, and you use that state’s correction. The same applies to the USSR. It’s divided by states, and EASA time questions involving the USSR will give the state of the place concerned. So again, the question will name the state, and you use that state’s correction. Now, one very important caveat about this extract. The Air Almanac extract issued for exam purposes is a copy from a 1992 Air Almanac. That matters because country names may have changed — the USSR is the obvious example — and the corrections may also have changed since then. But for exam purposes, the extract should be treated as valid. So you use the 1992 data as if it were current, even though you know the real world has moved on. Let me also mention the other two lists so you see the whole structure. List 2 covers countries close to or on the Greenwich meridian. List 3 covers countries generally to the west of the Greenwich meridian. So the three lists divide the world by longitude: east of Greenwich, on or near Greenwich, and west of Greenwich. The key takeaway for List 1: east of Greenwich means Standard Time is fast on UTC, you add the correction to UTC to get Standard Time, and for large countries you must know the specific state. That’s the core of how you’ll use this list in the exam.