Z time now (Zulu time)

What Z means

Z (“Zulu”) is the military and aviation letter for UTC+0, Coordinated Universal Time.

Zulu time and the military time zone letters

Zulu is the spoken name of the letter Z, and Z means UTC. The FAA uses Coordinated Universal Time for all operations and notes that “the term ‘Zulu’ may be used to denote UTC” (Aeronautical Information Manual 4-2-12). Times are given as four digits on the 24-hour clock and spoken digit by digit: the AIM’s example is 0920 UTC, “zero niner two zero”.

Nautical time zones have been labelled with letters since the 1920s (NIST). Internet mail standards describe the scheme: A to I are UTC+1 to UTC+9, K, L and M are UTC+10 to UTC+12, N to Y are UTC−1 to UTC−12, and Z is UTC (RFC 5322, §4.3). The letter J is left out of the sequence (RFC 822). One warning for developers: RFC 822 printed the signs the wrong way round, so RFC 5322 says a one-letter zone in an email header other than Z should be treated as unknown. The table below lists the letters.

Military time zone letters

Z converted to other zones

Every column is a fixed offset, so this table is valid on any date. Remember that the regions behind some columns switch to summer time (EST to EDT, CET to CEST, GMT to BST); the clock in those cities is then an hour later than the column.

Related zones and conversions

• UTC time
• Time zones of the world
• Daylight saving time
• Time zone converter