Jaunted

Well, sadly, as we realised when we tried to work it out a few days before the flight, this was the wrong route and the wrong timing to hit the New Year over and over again. We took off at 8.20pm PST, and because of the time differences, we never actually saw midnight anywhere; we crossed zones in between the hours. Duh.

At what we thought might be midnight—depending on what time zone we were in—we looked out of the window at Sioux Falls, Iowa, but saw nothing because, as it turned out, it was actually 1am already and those Iowans were getting their beauty sleep before the start of the caucuses. An hour beforehand, we'd been in the Mountain Time zone, so it had only been 11pm. Our New Year gone, just like that, as we were slobbering over Ryan Gosling in Drive on our seatback TV.

We never saw any fireworks throughout the flight, and neither did the pilot, although a flight attendant did tell us that she’d seen the odd, early one as we took off from Vegas.

Sioux Falls at what turned out to be not midnight

In fact, it was a pretty normal flight. Because it was an overnighter and passengers were sleeping (and also probably because we didn’t actually hit midnight at any point), there were no special announcements. There was no special New Year menu. In fact, the only things that marked it out from any other flight were the New Year hats that some of the crew were jauntily sporting, plus New Year greetings given out both over the PA and in person at the start and end of the flight. The crew was super friendly as we found on the way over, since this flight is part of the new “mixed fleet”. They even requested a round of applause for one of the crew, Hayley, as it was her birthday...but more on that another time.

We’ll give you the scoop on the flight itself later this week, but for now, all you need to know is that if you hate New Years, you could do a lot worse than fly east overnight on the 31st, specifically on BA0274. See you next year!

[Photos: juliab]