I was at the observation area last night killing a little time before I had to pick the g/f up from work and tower was talking to JetLink 4900 about having problems w/ their edict and release times. My best effort at transcribing from the feed archive...
Tower: JetLink4900, we got and edict program for Newark, they moved that time up. then we got a call for a release time for flow, then they gave us a wheels-up time of 00:31, that's 1 hour 17 from now.
The feed didn't get the audio from 4900, but I remember him "complaining" about how they had just de-iced and will have to go do that again before they can leave.
Tower: Yeah, I know what you mean, this is an ongoing thing w/ Newark and Flow, I don't understand how it works. They call and give you one time then they call and give you an hour delay. It makes no sense at all.
some time passes...
Tower: THey have two programs every day in Newark. They have an edict program, which your time is 23:12. Then we have to call flow so we can fit you into the sequence and for whatever reason, Newark is always...they give you times that are off the wall. You know, we call for O'Hare and they have an edict and add or subtract 5 minutes, but its reasonable. Here, you got 23:12 and then 00:31. How can you plan on that, especially in the winter. You can call company, maybe they can swap you with someone down the line here, but...
this got a little discussion going on among 4900, another flight at the gate I can't remember, JBU11 and tower. It ended w/ JBU asking for their wheels up time, which was too far in advance to be in the system, to which JBU replies "yeah, we're overachievers"
Around 23:30, 4900 got cleared to leave and all was well.
But my question(s) is/are what exactly is an edict time. I'm assuming release time is the time flights are allowed to take-off, is that correct?