Make It A Truly Epic New Year

In an age of jet aircraft, some offering supersonic flight speeds, I was wondering how many times could someone actually celebrate the New Year?

A trawl through the internet gave me the time differences by time zone, and with a little calculation, I found it is possible to do several times.

The first place to hit New Year is Christmas Island/Kirbati in Samoa, when it strikes Midnight there it is a very early 10am in the UK.

Although the distance from Samoa to New Zealand, who celebrate one hour later, is a massive 2097 miles requiring a commercial flight time of 4 Hours 21 minutes it would not possible. But, it could be done (just) in a Lockheed SR71 Blackbird, which recorded a speed of 2194 mph back on the 28^th July 1976 with pilot Eldon W Joersz at the stick.

Our next New Year occurs in Australia between 1pm and 2:30pm (due to the size of the country and the multiple time zones), from Brisbane to Alice Springs it is a short flight in the Blackbird of just 27 minutes, so again easily done assuming you can travel at over Mach 3 or for those who don’t like to fly just jump into your waiting Thrust SSC car and cruise on up at a relatively slow 763 mph, making Darwin Just in time.

Next landfall to welcome the New Year would be Japan at approx. 3pm, then on to China and Indonesia at 4pm and then on to Thailand for 5pm.

Over the next 3 hours you would be crossing the borders of firstly Bangladesh, then Pakistan and on to Russia and the United Arab Emirates arriving there at 8pm. (what the Russians would make of an Aircraft buzzing their airspace at Mach 3 is anyone’s guess : - )

By passing Iran at 8:30 pm and Iraq 9pm we now move on to Greece whereas the clocks strike Midnight, the UK is now just 2 hours behind.

At 11pm the party gets going in Europe from Lille in France to the UK the Eurostar Travel Time is 1 hour 20 Minutes but again possible with a little imagination and a fast boat and waiting for a car getting you to Trafalgar Square about 10 minutes to Midnight.

Our Epic Journey continues on to Greenland hopefully arriving one hour later, then on to the USA where you can celebrate between 5 & 8am depending which coast you are on.

Final port of call on our trip would be Midway Island in the Pacific for the festivities at 11am.

For a trip of less distance but even more Epic, join us just off junction 36 of the M1 between Barnsley and Sheffield,

We are open for all your Christmas and New Year Needs all year round, closing only on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day and you don’t need to bring an aircraft to catch up with us!!