Some United Airlines passengers were disappointed heading into 2024 when their flight scheduled for two New Year's Eves was delayed several hours.
UA200 is a daily flight that departs Guam at 7:35 a.m. and arrives in Honolulu at 6:50 p.m. the day before. That's because the seven-hour flight crosses the international date line and Guam is 20 hours ahead of Hawaii.
On January 1, this meant passengers could count down to 2024 twice.
“You only live once, but you can celebrate New Year’s Eve twice!” United Posted on X, formerly Twitter. The airline said it was the only U.S. airline offering such a flight.
However, the flight was delayed by more than six hours. It departed at 1:49 p.m. and arrived in Honolulu just after midnight on New Year's Day, causing passengers to miss their second countdown.
Calvin Pham of Orlando, Florida, was among the passengers whose New Year's plans were disrupted. He booked the United flight specifically for the experience of a double New Year's celebration, he told USA TODAY in an email.
Pham received a delay notification on his phone as he waited at his hotel for a ride to the airport.
This would have been Pham's first double New Year celebration, and he planned to celebrate on a pre-booked fireworks cruise with friends in Honolulu. “That was the most disappointing part for me because I would miss celebrating with my friends,” Pham said.
The airline told USA TODAY in an email that it had no comment on the incident, but responded to tweets from people offering help with the rebooking.
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How do people travel through time to experience two New Year celebrations?
The concept of traveling back in time to celebrate New Year's Eve twice isn't entirely new. This is possible when flights cross the international date line, which marks a new calendar day. When people cross the date line east, they fly back one day, no matter how long the flight itself is.
Some passengers specifically book these flights across time zones for a unique experience.
Pham first heard about the concept a few years ago and “immediately put it on my 'to do' list because I found the novelty to be an amusing situation.”
“I suppose you could celebrate any holiday or birthday twice by flying the UA200, but New Year's Eve is a special holiday for global and community fanfare,” he said.
There are usually only a few flights scheduled that cross the dateline at the right time. In addition to UA200, other flights traveling back in time on New Year's Eve included an all-Nippon flight that departed Tokyo shortly after midnight on January 1 and arrived in Los Angeles at 5:12 p.m. on New Year's Eve. There was also an Air New Zealand flight that left Auckland at 8:50am on January 1 and landed in the Cook Islands at around 1:29pm on New Year's Eve.
Some travel companies have even created special itineraries based on a double New Year's Eve. In 2018, luxury private jet company PrivateFly offered a very expensive package that had people flying from Sydney, Australia, to Los Angeles, California, which was still New Year's Eve, on the evening of December 31st. The 19-hour time difference allowed travelers to “repeat more than 5.5 hours of party time,” PrivateFly’s marketing director said in a news release. However, the cost of chartering the entire aircraft for the 2018 itinerary was $255,500 and it was only a one-way flight to Sydney.
Kathleen Wong is a travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Hawaii. You can reach her at [email protected].