Time travel isn’t just for science fiction movies. Or at least what happened the night of New Year’s to passengers Los Angeles-Sydney it comes very close to that: a story halfway between Lost and Dark. In fact, due to a plane breakdown, these unwary “time travelers” missed the midnight stroke of the New Year and found themselves catapulted straight into the night January 1, 2023. How could that happen? The strange paradox has to do with crossing the date change line (the boundary traditionally marking the boundary between one day of the calendar and the next) at a precise point in time. But let’s reconstruct what happened one by one.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
The time travel of passengers on an airplane: Here’s how it’s possible
The flight, a United Airlines Boeing 787-9, departed Los Angeles on the night of December 29. Due to a mechanical problem with one of the plane’s engines, the pilot had to make an emergency landing on the island i pay i pay, in American Samoa, east of the date line. The passengers thus spent the entire December 30th on a small island of the Pacific, waiting for a new plane to pick them up and take them to Sydney. The second flight left Pago Pago at 3:29 am on the 31st, but when he landed Australia on January 1, 2023 it was already 3:30 a.m. Crossing the date line from east to west instantly catapults the calendar one day further, with the effect that New Year’s Eve is skipped in this case.
Some passengers complained about the time it took United Airlines to send a replacement flight as they were unable to make midnight in Sydney. Others, however, enjoyed the unexpected island vacation. Everyone will no doubt remember that time when they “traveled through time.”
