How does stuff like this even happen? This time, you can thank flight delays and the International Dateline.
Passengers were on board a flight that left Auckland, New Zealand, at 12:05 a.m. local time. That meant the flight left in 2018, The Daily Mail reported.
But it landed in Honolulu at 10:16 a.m. on Dec. 31, 2017.
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
Technically, Auckland is 23 hours ahead of Honolulu.
Twitter had a field day with the pseudo time-traveling flight.
— Hawkeye Images (@webcentrick) December 31, 2017
Bring back lotto numbers!
— John Rambo (@JohnJRamboEsq) December 31, 2017
You could fly the other way and skip the New Year's Eve thing completely. https://t.co/SrM2UK17U7
— Ira Goldman 🦆🦆🦆 (@KDbyProxy) December 31, 2017
Sounds almost like a Twilight Zone ep...
— Craig McDermott (@cpmaz) January 1, 2018
So, in theory, the passengers could have celebrated the new year and will get a chance to do it for the 2nd time in 24 hours!
— 🦅Pheagle 🦅 (@PheagleAdler) December 31, 2017
And while some were having fun with the so-called time-traveling flight, others used logic to explain that it’s actually not that odd of an occurrence.
That happens every time a plane crosses the current midnight line - think of it as the border between the kingdoms of 2017 and 2018 - in the wrong direction on New Year’s. In other words, it happens a lot. Still seems to surprise a lot of people every year.
— Anna Wallenstam (@WALLSTAM) December 31, 2017
Best thing about #NewYearsEve is the annual realization time is an arbitrary construct to define something non-linear as linear because humans cannot interpret it otherwise. https://t.co/YrOoPIZ3Br
— Turkeys & Trumps get cooked in November🦃web rant (@web_rant) December 31, 2017
Sixteen years ago, a similar flight lifted off in the 21st century and landed in the 20th.
— Twyla Naythias Fox (@TheRealTwylaFox) December 31, 2017
Cox Media Group