The flight departs in 2017, landing in 2016

A flight took off in 2017 from Shanghai, China and landed in San Francisco, USA in 2016.

This strange incident happened on United Airlines flight.

Map depicting the route of the UA890 flight.(Photo: Flight Radar 24).

Accordingly, United Airlines flight carries UA890 number to take off from Shanghai airport at 0h22 on January 1, 2017, local time. After a few hours of flying, the plane landed at San Francisco airport on December 31, 2016 at 7pm in California, USA.

It is this special feature that United Airlines flight passengers have had the opportunity to welcome the New Year's Eve twice.

San Francisco and Shanghai are located in two hemispheres, nearly 10,000 km apart, so there is a time difference. Accordingly, San Francisco is about 16 hours late than Shanghai.

The pre-take-off phenomenon occurs frequently for transcontinental flights and is absolutely nothing unusual. Therefore, in order to avoid confusion for the system, airlines often use international hours to announce departure or landing hours for passengers.