Why does it take longer to fly to Hawaii?

Everything on earth, not just the ground, but also the water (and even the atmosphere), is rotating in the same direction, Forbes reported. Since planes in the sky are being pulled eastward with the earth, it takes more time to go west. Think of it kind of like walking against the wind.



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So why was my flight to Hawaii, from east to west, so much longer than my flight home? The reason it took so much longer to fly back is the jet stream, a river of fast-moving air high up in the sky. Jet streams are usually about 100 miles wide. They can be thousands of miles long and are found all over the earth.

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In summary, jet streams are the reason why flights take shorter when flying from the west to the east. While they do help to shave off up to a few hours from long flights in some cases, they are not entirely without drawbacks.

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It's been established that the Pacific Ocean is big ... really big. And with greater distances come greater costs since the plane needs more fuel. Executive Flyers writes that while you could just charge passengers more to fly that distance, this may lead to lots of unhappy customers and airlines losing out on sales.

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Everything on earth, not just the ground, but also the water (and even the atmosphere), is rotating in the same direction, Forbes reported. Since planes in the sky are being pulled eastward with the earth, it takes more time to go west. Think of it kind of like walking against the wind.

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What is the longest flight in the world by distance? The longest flight in the world by distance is New York (JFK) to Singapore (SIN) on Singapore Airlines clocking in at 9,537 miles. What plane can fly the farthest in the world?

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The short answer is, no, it's not illegal to fly over Antarctica. But there are practical considerations that make it challenging for regular airlines to navigate across the land. In many parts of Antarctica, there's limited or no infrastructure, no landing strips, and obviously no refuelling stations for planes.

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Because of its vast size, crossing the Pacific Ocean requires a staggering quantity of fuel. However, most commercial aircraft do not fly directly over the Pacific Ocean; instead, they choose what are known as 'curved paths'. These paths offers a faster, more efficient route given the curved nature of the earth.

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Thanks to the low visibility and undeveloped infrastructure, flying over Antarctica is extremely difficult. Specifically, because of the strong magnetic fields that surround the polar regions, navigating there, no matter how well-equipped the airplane is in terms of instrumentation, can be particularly challenging.

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The two main mountain ranges in the US cause most of the turbulence while flying coast to coast. Although some flights have light turbulence flying from the west coast to Hawaii, it's generally no big deal. I've been on that route dozens of times and can't remember one flight that was out of the norm.

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It's such a short flight, that you can even go for the weekend! On average, the absolute shortest flights from Los Angeles (LAX) and San Francisco (SAN) to Hawaii are about six hours non-stop.

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Keep this in mind: Hawaii is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Ocean has two sides, and there are nonstop flights to HNL from both. It's roughly 5–6 hours over ocean if you come from the west coast of the continental U.S. or Canada. (No nonstops from Mexico, Central America, or South America.)

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Flying over the ocean is safe. Landing in it is not. It is only the squishy, carbon-based organisms in the two front seats of the plane that have trouble seeing in the dark. All the systems on the plane (and on the ground for that matter) work just as well in darkness as they do in light.

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Aircraft move through the atmosphere with the Earth's rotation, so its speed is not affected . What would affect aircraft speed is the wind at that altitude, which can cause a flight from London to New Jersey to be two hours longer than the other way.

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