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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.

Updated on: Jan 2, 2018, 23:13:25 IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By
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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.

It’s neither a curious case of time travel nor the famed time-turner at play. (AFP File Photo)
It’s neither a curious case of time travel nor the famed time-turner at play. (AFP File Photo)

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.

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.

Twitter, as is usual, was full of quirky tweets:

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