What is midnight?
 

"We will hold this reservation until midnight Thu., Sep. 12, 2013 in Beijing, People's Republic of China (PEK - Capital)."

Is that 11:59:59pm Wednesday or 11:59:59pm Thursday?

Thurs at midnight it gets CXed if not tkted or 1 sec after 11:59:59 Weds

Isn't it already 11:59:59pm in China? I just reserved this less than 10 mins ago.

From my experience holding reservations, non-ticketed itins get flushed at midnight Houston time, not at the time of the location were the itinerary is.

Yeah, I've had interesting experiences with held tickets at COdbaUA.

I'm on EST (Washington) and had an held itin disappear from my itins at 00h01 EST but when I typed the confirmation number directly into .sux (no mention of my account number) - I still saw the reservation....until 01h00 EST (so, midnight Central).

I've always noticed the wording at the top of the reservation and how it says held until [seemingly] the Initial Departure City's Local Time at Midnight...but i'm not certain it really works that way...

Just another mystery here at COdbaUA it seems!

-jeremy

It is 12:00 AM, and dont call me Shirley

The above posters who state that midnight Houston time are correct

12 am and 12 pm don't exist, am and pm both refer to the "meridies", or middle of the day, before and after. There is 12 midnight and 12 noon.

The phrase "midnight Thursday" is ambiguous and can be interpreted to mean either the beginning of the day Thursday or the end of the day Thursday. It is therefore recommended (by the National Institute of Standards and Technology) that this type of phrasing be avoided and that reference be made to 11:59 p.m. or 12:01 a.m. or by using a 24 hour clock. See http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/times.cfm.

UA should know better.

This. And if any fare rules come into effect they expire at midnight central (for example if you hold a fare that requires a 7 day advanced purchase, 7 days expires when it become less than 7 at midnight central time - I had an issue that involved that detail a couple of weeks ago where it got submitted by my company TA after midnight central and therefore would not ticket because the 7 day fare had expired)

Might the references to "Houston Time" be slightly out of date? Isn't it "Chicago Time" now??

Same time zone, assuming that Texas and Illinois follow the same daylight savings time dates.

My pet peeve is when I get something referring to, say, "7PM EST" in the middle of the summer. Do they mean EST? Or EDT? Are they somewhere where they don't observe daylight time?

Totally agree. I just drove from Chicago to Connecticut and in north central Indiana I was none to pleased to be alerted by a sign that I was entering Eastern Standard Time. Being August, I sprung my clock an hour past that!

This thread is making me very pleased to have made the decision to post the business hours on my company's web site as 7:30 AM to 6:00 PM - Central Time Zone.