I am trying to plan my first overseas trip and am stuck with flight time calculations.


Listed Flight Time : 10 hours 45 minutes

Listed Departure Time : 6:00pm Sydney Time (30th August 2013)
Listed Arrival Time : 7:45am Honolulu Time (30th August 2013)


I converted to UTC/GMT time so I'm comparing apples with apples:

Sydney is UTC +10... so Departure Time is 8:00am UTC (30th August)
Honolulu is UTC -10... so Arrival Time is 5:45pm UTC (30th August)


I make that a difference of 9 hours and 45 minutes.

So, they are listing a flight time of 10 hours and 45 minutes... but when I am doing the calculation on their departure and arrival times I get 9 hours and 45 minutes.


Hawaii doesn't do daylight savings time so it will stay UTC -10. Sydney doesn't start daylight savings till October... it will be UTC +10 for quite some time.

In other words I can't see any complications regarding time zones changing mid flight.



When I do the calculation on the return flight I don't have any discrepancy... they list the flight time as 10 hours and 35 minutes... and when I calculate the flight time using the departure and arrival and the same method above, I also get 10 hours and 35 minutes.

It seems a wild claim to say they have a flaw in their itinerary calculation system, so I'm trying to rule out where I'm going wrong before I make that claim.

Cross checking for the flight times to Hawaii from Sydney I find that about 10 hours 38 minutes is right.... which is in line with their listed flight time of 10 hours and 45 minutes (source: http://www.travelmath.com/flying-tim...alia/to/Hawaii)

This discrepancy showed itself when I started making a spreadsheet to plan my itinerary... and planning bookings for connecting flights when I land... hence the concern that if they have a mistake in the itinerary then I'll miss a connecting flight because I'll arrive an hour later than they suggest!