How do I read the dutysheet? As an example, I have taken the first page of my dutysheet December 2007 in order to show you how to read a dutysheet. You may click the image on the left side to enlarge it. On December 1st, a so-called "rotation" starts. These are up to six days of consecutive flying, most of the time all days with the same Captain, and sometimes several days with the same cabin crew. Disregard the "LI4 F/O" prompt, it only means that I will be flying the line introduction at the beginning of my SWISS carreer. Usually it will only say "F/O", showing that I will perform copilot duties on this flight (see December 14 for example).   December 1 sees me flying from Zurich (ZRH) to Dusseldorf (DUS) as SWISS flight number LX1016 and back to Zurich (DUS-ZRH) as LX1017. Then follows a flight to Geneva (GVA/LX2806), where I go into a nightstop/hotel. The next flight follows on the morning of December 2nd, where we fly to Barcelona (BCN) and back to Geneva (GVA). Another good night's rest in Geneva, before we fly to Zurich, and therefater to Istanbul and back. After a night at home, the last piar of flights to Copenhagen and back follow. And what you cannot see in the plan is the fact, that about 20 minutes before the landing in Zurich, a inflight message was printed on our fax stating that we have to fly to Nice after our Copenhagen flight, because of lack of staff. Well, so don't be anxious if you won't reach me two hours after the last flight on the schedule. It could be that the company loves me too much and sent me on another flight. :-)  Always check in the top right corner if the times are "LOCAL" times, which means the times indicated are given in the local time at the respective airport. Usually the tag says "actual UTC time", meaning the times are given in "Coordinated/Zulu time", which is winter time in the United Kingdom/London. It has the advantage that you really see how long a flight takes, because London time remains London time no matter where you are on the world, but has the disadvantage that you need to convert the times to local time if you want to find out if it's morning, noon, afternoon or night at the time of landing/departure. "Zulu"/UTC time is the standard time used in aviation and marine navigation, as this way the whole world knows they are talking about the same time, and do not need to convert local times every time. A flight that takes off at 1200Z (Z=UTC time) in Zurich and flies 8 hours to New York will land in New York at 2000Z, no matter if it is summer or winter or whatever. The only thing is that you need to convert the schedule times to local time. For Zurich, this means "plus 1 hour" in wintertime and "plus 2 hours" in summertime.    What are 3- (IATA) and 4-Letter (ICAO) Codes? Every Airport has been designated a specific 3-Letter Code and a so called ICAO (4-Letter) Code. IATA/3-Letter codes As an example, Zurich/Switzerland Airport has the 3-Letter Code "ZRH". These codes are somehow derivated from the Airport name, and sometimes logical, like in Zurich, sometimes not really, like in Chicago, where the code "ORD" doesn't really tell you something. If you wonder why, read this. The 3-letter codes were introduced by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and are the more common ones in aviation, used by travel agents, check-in staff, planning offices, in flightplans and timetables. Therefore our dutysheet contains these codes to show us where our flights lead us to. The most common ones in my dutysheet are to be seen on this side (see "Route Network").

ICAO/4-Letter codes Zurich/Switzerland has the ICAO code "LSZH". These codes are more logical and therefore used by air traffic controllers and pilots. The first letter stands for the continent, "L" means southern europe, "E" northern europe, and so on. The second letter designates the country. The 3rd an 4th letter are designating the airport. So LSZH is an airport in southern europe (L), Switzerland (S), and Zurich (ZH). Why is the "continent" letter needed? Well, "LS.." is Switzerland, but "ES.." is Sweden, so just an "S" wouldn't be enough. EHAM would be in northern europe (E), Holland (H), and is... surprise.. Amsterdam. It's that easy. These codes were introduced by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). You won't ever find an ICAO code on my plan, so you don't need a decoder for it.

Last Update: 07.12.07 Legal Note: Please read the Disclaimer (German).