After announcing the postponement of daylight saving timeLebanese state carrier Middle East Airlines said the departure times of all scheduled flights from Beirut Airport between Sunday and April 21 will be brought forward by one hour. The country’s two cellphone networks have sent messages to citizens urging them to change their watches to manual instead of automatic to avoid changing the time at midnight, even though in many cases the time has been changed anyway.
So while public institutions are theoretically bound by the government’s decision, many private institutions, including TV stations, schools and businesses, have said they will ignore the decision and switch to daylight saving time as previously planned.