Despite all our technological advancements as a race, the ability to time travel remains stubbornly out of reach. Despite this, certain aircraft manage to travel back in time every day of the year, and they don’t even use a flux capacitor. Here’s how they do it.
Do you want to live your day all over again?
There are some days you just can’t wait to be over, like perhaps the first day back to work when teleworking mainstay Slack decides not to cooperate. But there are others that you wish would go on forever, like birthdays or New Year’s Eve. So what if you could go back in time and do it all again?
Well, although the DeLorean is yet to achieve the feat of time travel outside of the cinema screen, it is possible to go back in time, at least by a few hours. Flying some routes on an airplane will see you landing earlier than you took off, which is pretty cool.
While most of the world was under instructions not to enjoy this New Year’s Eve too much, under normal circumstances, there are ways you can celebrate it not just once but twice. If you can’t get enough of that Auld Lang Syne, here are just some of the routes where aircraft travel ‘back in time’ all the time.
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Flying to Hawaii from Tokyo
Crossing the Pacific Ocean in an eastward direction is a favorite among many Japanese. Hawaii is a huge draw for these travelers, with ANA laying on multiple A380 flights to serve the Hawaiian Islands in normal times.
Not only does this six- to seven-hour flight connect the busy metropolis of Tokyo with America’s paradise islands, it also takes you back in time by almost a whole day. For example, ANA’s flight from Haneda to Honolulu typically takes off in the evening at around 22:00, but lands in Hawaii at around 10:00 the very same day.
That means you could enjoy almost all of your special day in Tokyo before boarding a flight and then enjoying it all over again in Hawaii! Pretty neat.
Sydney to Los Angeles
Flying from the antipodean hub of Sydney to any city on the West Coast allows the crossing of the international date line and arrival early enough to live the same day twice, or at least part of it.
As an example, Delta’s 11:20 departure from Sydney would arrive in Los Angeles at 06:05 the same day, giving you almost 14 hours in the air and an extra five hours or so to live the same day at the destination.
In normal times, United Airlines also runs a route from Sydney across to San Francisco. This one leaves at 14:00, arriving into SFO at 08:20 the same day. Similar services leaving New Zealand late in the day will arrive in the west of the USA early in the morning.
East Asia to the West Coast
Basically, any eastern Asian flights heading across to the West Coast of the US cross the international date line so, in theory, go back in time. At the turn of the year between 2017 and 2018, FlightRadar24.com found no fewer than six flights that left Asia on January 1st, 2018, arriving in the USA on December 31st, 2017.
The 6 flights from the future (Year 2018) are about to arrive to their destination (Year 2017). pic.twitter.com/h01QPmCDEB
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) January 1, 2018
Of course, the downside to all this time traveling is that you have to lose the time again when you want to go home. For example, flying on Delta from Los Angeles back to Sydney will see you departing at around 23:00 in the evening, arriving at 08:30 two days later!
Have you ever been on a time-traveling flight? Let us know in the comments.