Flight went 'back in time' after it took off in 2025 and lands back in 2024
Topics: China, Los Angeles, Travel, Community
Britt Jones
Featured Image Credit: Daniel Garrido/Getty/Flight Radar
Topics: China, Los Angeles, Travel, Community
Ever wished that you could time travel? Well, now you can do it on an aeroplane.
Forget technological advancements and films that make you think that you’ve got to wait hundreds of years to be able to jump years, months or days into the future or back to the past.
There’s a way you can do that, just by booking a plane ticket.
Okay, so it sounds crazy, but a passenger plane that took off from Hong Kong on January 1, 2025, was transported back to 2024 upon landing.
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It would be amazing to be able to celebrate New Year’s Eve twice in the space of a few hours.
That’s exactly what happened.
So, those who traveled from Hong Kong, China, to Los Angeles’s International Airport, arrived on New Year’s Eve 2024.
This is all thanks to our strange time zone areas.
The Cathay Pacific Flight 880 left Hong Kong just after midnight local time and as it made its way over the Pacific Ocean, it ended up crossing the International Date Line about six hours into the 12-hour trip.
As it entered the crossover, the plane was transported (not literally) back in time to just before 8:30 pm when it landed on Tuesday at LAX.
The International Date Line (aka IDL) is an invisible line down the middle of the Pacific Ocean that essentially represents the point at which two dates are separated from each other.
Those who live on one side will be one day behind the other, and the other is a day forward.
Get it?
So, for those who fly anywhere East will lose a day, and those who travel West will gain a day because of the line and time zone shift.
Imagine this: It’s 2am on New Year’s Day, you’re hungover and you want to be able to sleep for at least 12 hours to cure yourself, but you don’t want to risk wasting your entire day spent in bed.
So, you book a last-minute flight that’s heading West, and viola, you’ve been able to sleep on the plane, get a hotel and then sleep for an entire day and you’re still technically on January 1 because of the IDL.
Time and Date explained: “The International Date Line (IDL) is located at about 180° east (or west). It is halfway around the world from the prime meridian (0° longitude), the reference point of time zones, which runs through Greenwich, UK.
“The date line runs from the North Pole to the South Pole and marks the Western and Eastern Hemisphere divide. It is not straight but curves around landmasses and national borders. For example, it leans towards the east at the Bering Strait between Asia and North America, leaving Cape Dezhnev in Russia a day ahead of Cape Prince of Wales in Alaska even though they are only 80 km (50 mi) apart.”
There you have it - a roadmap to follow if ever you’re in need of a few more hours in the day.