0
$\begingroup$

I have been flying to different countries so often and this question came to my mind out of nowhere! Which are the two countries with the flight time between them and time zone differences are equal?

For example, considering current time differences between time zones on all over the world, let's say that hypothetical i will take off at 16:00 from Istanbul and i will land to Munich. And time difference between these cities is 2 hours and flight duration is 2 hours. So, when i will land, the local time in Munich will be 16:00.

My question basically is that is there any countries/cities in the world like the example above?

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
4
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ This question might be more applicable on SE Travel $\endgroup$
    – Fred
    Jun 2 '18 at 14:24
  • $\begingroup$ Depends on your flight path and speed of aircraft. $\endgroup$
    – f.thorpe ♦
    Jun 2 '18 at 20:31
  • $\begingroup$ If you fly from Melbourne Australia to Los Angeles USA, you usually arrive slightly after or slightly before the time you left, but I'm not sure if that is what you mean $\endgroup$
    – haresfur
    Jun 4 '18 at 4:23
  • $\begingroup$ Very roughly speaking, if you fly west at the Earth's rotation speed (1000 mph times cosine of the latitude), your local time will remain relatively constant, at least until you cross the International Date Line. $\endgroup$
    – user967
    Jun 5 '18 at 17:39
2
$\begingroup$

I'm not going to look for examples, but there will be some. More interesting is to consider the underlying geometry:

At one extreme, if you fly from north to south (or vice versa) you'll experience little or no change in time zone no matter how long you fly for.

At the other extreme, if you fly from east to west the time zones will go in the wrong direction. Depending on how you define the question there might be an "answer" in this direction, where you fly west for n hours and go back by n time zones. But for the rest of this question, let's assume you want later time zones.

If you fly from west to east, you're chasing the time zones in the right direction... but unless you have a supersonic aircraft, you can't go fast enough - you will travel east slower than the rate at which the earth is spinning, so (as long as you go far enough for more than a 1 time zone change, i.e. to get out of rounding errors) the number of hours you fly for will always be more than the number of time zones you gain.

So to match the two, you must fly diagonally : north-east or south-east. The exact angle will depend on the speed of your plane and the latitude that you start from. And then, you have to find a city along that line!

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1
$\begingroup$

If you flew from Warsaw, Poland to Lviv, Ukraine the flight time would be one hour and the time difference the two is one hour.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.