Have you ever wanted to celebrate New Year’s Eve twice? Okay, maybe you haven’t. To be honest, I haven’t either, since I’m asleep before 8PM on New Year’s Eve, just as I am every day. However, if there’s one thing that would get me in the spirit, it would be an aviation angle…
Along those lines, I figured it would be fun to look at the flights that let you celebrate New Year’s Eve (or a birthday, or other special occasion) twice.
In this post:
The joys of travel, time zones, and very long days
Airplanes really make the world a pretty small place, as nowadays you can travel to the other side of the globe with a single flight, in less than a day. As anyone who has traveled long haul knows, jetlag can be tough to deal with, and this relates to timezone changes.
The further east or west you travel, the more timezone changes you’ll experience. And in addition to the general timezone changes that happen one hour (or sometimes 30 minutes) at a time, you also have the International Date Line, which can impact the day that it is. The International Date Line is located over the Pacific Ocean, and it’s not a straight line, but is instead mapped out in quite the interesting way.
So traveling across the Atlantic and traveling across the Pacific are very different in terms of the time change, at least when you factor in the days:
- A westbound flight across the Pacific will often land one or two calendar days after it takes off, since the International Date Line pushes you forward a day
- An eastbound flight across the Pacific will often land before it even departs, since the International Date Line pushes you back a day
When I was younger and cared about birthdays, I always thought it would be fun to try to create the longest birthday ever by continuing to fly westbound for as long as one can. Getting a ~40 hour birthday is super easy, by just flying from Asia to the United States.
However, arguably the most interesting flights in terms of time changes are those that land a day before they take off.
The coolest flights to go back in time by a day
While there are lots of flights that land before they depart (adjusted for local time), there are a more limited number of flights that land the calendar day before they depart.
The single route that most travels back in time is between Samoa and American Samoa. The islands’ airports are just 93 miles apart, and the time at both airports is the same… except they’re on different days, as the two destinations are split by the International Date Line.
So when it’s 12PM on January 1 in Samoa, it’s 12PM on December 31 in American Samoa. Samoa Airways operates flights between the two airports, which are blocked at around 45 minutes. This means you could leave Apia, Samoa (APW) at 1PM on January 1, and arrive in Pago Pago, American Samoa (PPG) at 1:45PM on December 31.
That’s obviously an extreme example, but let’s look at some other flights that stand out. Here are some of them, ranked based on how far back in time they travel to the previous calendar day:
- Fiji Airways’ flight FJ822 from Kiritimati (CXI) to Honolulu (HNL) departs at 7:30AM and arrives at 10:40AM (-1 day); the catch is that this fifth freedom flight only operates once per week
- Air New Zealand’s flight NZ946 from Auckland (AKL) to Rarotonga (RAR) departs at 8:50AM and arrives at 1:40PM (-1 day)
- United Airlines’ flight UA200 from Guam (GUM) to Honolulu (HNL) departs at 7:40AM arrives at 6:55PM (-1 day)
- All Nippon Airways’ flight NH106 from Tokyo (HND) to Los Angeles (LAX) departs at 12:50AM and arrives at 5:50PM (-1 day)
- Starlux Airlines’ flight JX2 from Taipei (TPE) to San Francisco (SFO) departs at 12:05AM and arrives at 7:00PM (-1 day)
- Cathay Pacific’s flight CX888 Hong Kong (HKG) to Vancouver (YVR) departs at 1:00AM and arrives at 8:35PM (-1 day)
- Cathay Pacific’s flight CX872 Hong Kong (HKG) to San Francisco (SFO) departs at 1:00AM and arrives at 9:00PM (-1 day)
- Cathay Pacific’s flight CX800 from Hong Kong (HKG) to Los Angeles (LAX) departs at 12:30AM and arrives at 8:55PM (-1 day)
Bottom line
Long haul travel can involve quite some time zone changes. On top of that, the International Date Line can mean that you can take a long haul flight and arrive before you depart. If you want to celebrate New Year’s Eve or your birthday twice, there are some flights you can take where you quite literally go back in time to the previous calendar year. Heck, there’s even a sub-100 mile flight you can take that makes this possible.
Has anyone ever celebrated a special occasion with some time zone fun?
Basically, E. Asia and Oceania routes back to US. Have done this before (on NYE), and it’s ‘fun,’ but not that special. If your schedule allows for it, why not! I always like when crews get festive, too. @Tim Dunn should be happy to hear that I particularly enjoyed a DeltaOne flight recently where nearly all the FA’s had nice ‘holiday light’ necklaces on. How cheerful!
The year before the pandemic I did the Apia, Samoa - Pago Pago, American Samoa flight eastbound across the dateline. What made it interesting was that it was a daytrip which meant the return flight took place prior to the outbound flight. When booking the flight on the Samoa Airways website, I had to select the return flight first and the outbound flight second to put them in the correct order chronologically.
In other news, if you want to skip big birthdays that make you feel old, an LAX/SFO or DFW/IAH/ORD/JFK nonstop to Oceania westbound means you never have to celebrate getting older.
I may have done that once...
Or SQ 21/23 NY to SIN. These 19 hr flights literally cross 2 days due to 12 timezone crossing for a total of 31hrs so great for missing annoying events / dates.
Wouldn’t the Hawaiian (Alaska) flight from AKL to HNL count?
@ weekendsurfer -- It seems those flights depart at 11:30PM, so since they leave before midnight, they wouldn't count by these standards (unless I'm missing something).
I have flown internationally on my birthday a few times these past few years (mostly unintentionally). All of these flights have been westbound so I have gotten a longer birthday. Longest birthday yet has been 34 hours, where I got to the airport just before 12am, (and waited an extra couple minutes so my family could wish me happy birthday), took a 3am flight, and flew to the US eventually where I landed 23 hours...
I have flown internationally on my birthday a few times these past few years (mostly unintentionally). All of these flights have been westbound so I have gotten a longer birthday. Longest birthday yet has been 34 hours, where I got to the airport just before 12am, (and waited an extra couple minutes so my family could wish me happy birthday), took a 3am flight, and flew to the US eventually where I landed 23 hours later at 4pm. Got home at 7pm, and crashed out on my bed at midnight.
I'm flying again on my birthday this upcoming week from Europe to the US. I should have a 30 hour birthday this time.
Didn't one of United's "double New Years" flights have a significant maintenance issue last year and the passengers ended up 'missing" both NYE's?
I’ll bet Tim, will know …. watch this space ….
The famous Aeroroutes has a post that did an analysis of scheduled flights operating on 12/31, as well as some that "might" do this if they end up operating a bit later/earlier. (Interestingly, one of those is westbound, due to quirks in time zones.) https://www.aeroroutes.com/eng/251221-2526flights
Japan to Hawaii are great options. Departing around 21:00 arriving around 10:00 the morning of the same date as departure. Allows for an early new year's dinner in Tokyo, and full new year's celebrations in Honolulu.
How about adding the scheduled flight time (hours and minutes) of each flight?
Four years ago on one of these eastbound flights I remember arriving at my sister's house on the west coast one day earlier than I had originally told her (due to my miscalculation).
Equally unique eastbound is having a long layover (in a country such as Japan), where you can eat breakfast in Hong Kong, lunch in Tokyo, and dinner in San Francisco all in the same day.