The flight takes off in 2025 and lands in 2024

Cathay Pacific flight CX880 took off from Hong Kong International Airport at 12:21 on January 1, 2025 and flew for more than 12 hours before landing in Los Angeles at 8:33 pm on December 31, 2024 local time, according to Flightstats. This is a result of time zone differences and the International Date Line (IDL), an imaginary line that runs along the 180-degree meridian in the Pacific Ocean. When passing through IDL from west to east, we will be “set back” by a day, leading to a situation where a flight appears to land before departing, according to IFL Science.

However, it is not necessary to fly through IDL to experience this effect. In 1999-2000, Air France offered passengers the opportunity to celebrate the millennium twice with a Concorde flight that left Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris at 1 a.m. on January 1, 2000 and landed. took off at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York at 23:00 on December 31, 1999 local time. Because the Concorde plane traveled at supersonic speeds, it could fly fast enough to “catch” an earlier time zone.

Although widely recognized, IDL is not mandatory and countries are free to choose the date and time. The 180-degree meridian cuts across several landmasses, including the easternmost tip of Russia and several islands of Fiji. However, imaginary line crossings in these territories do not involve any change in date.

Many aspects of time zones and calendars are man-made, based on astronomical phenomena such as the Earth’s rotation and orbit, but adapted for practical purposes such as travel schedules and communication standardization. globally. The Earth’s rotation rate can be influenced by the Moon and the planet’s mass distribution, leading to days that are a few microseconds longer or shorter than the standard 24-hour mark. From 1972 to 2020, an average day took about 3 milliseconds. However, over the past four years, the days have become slightly longer for unknown reasons.