Time travel? Flight takes off in 2018, lands in 2017
A 10-minute delay in departure caused a Hawaiin Airlines flight, originally scheduled for December 31, 2017, to take off on January 1, 2018, from Auckland.
world Updated: Jan 02, 2018 18:24 IST
Flight HA446 of Hawaiian Airlines took off in 2018 and landed in 2017. Surprised? Don’t be -- it’s neither a curious case of time travel nor the famed time-turner at play.
A 10-minute delay in departure caused the flight, originally scheduled for December 31, 2017, to take off on January 1, 2018 from Auckland, New Zealand. Eight hours later, when it landed in Honolulu, it was still December 31, 2017. Honolulu is 23 hours behind Auckland.
A journalist based in Washington was the first to tweet about the ‘time travel’. The post has since been shared over 14,000 times.
Because of an unexpected delay, Hawaiian Airlines flight 446 took off in 2018 and will land in 2017. #timetravel pic.twitter.com/A5vesXmjqq
— Sam Sweeney (@SweeneyABC) December 31, 2017
The flight crossed the international date line, causing the alleged time travel.
However, Flight HA446 was not the only one that travelled from 2018 to 2017. It was joined by six other aircraft that brought their passengers to 2017, celebrating the New Year twice.
6 aircraft just took off from Taipei in year 2018, to bring their passengers back to year 2017 in North America!#TimeTravel pic.twitter.com/pZYW8mQp03
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) December 31, 2017
Twitter, as is usual, was full of quirky tweets:
So, we have time travel, but still no flying cars.
— David Aus (@David_Aus) December 31, 2017
Who in their right mind would want to go BACK to 2017?
— Frenett Branco Marco (@FrenettMarco) December 31, 2017
We've always had time travel. Its just getting the accelerator and reverse gear working we've had issues with
— Tony Pedley (@hammarbytp) December 31, 2017
— Hawkeye Images (@webcentrick) December 31, 2017