USA to India traveling always eastward - save a day possible?

Edor

I adding the following summary to my OP so that people might save some time at least and not necessarily need to read the entire thread. Thanks for all the posts.

MY SUMMARY
My thinking was definitely off, yet I have enjoyed all the posts in response and learned a bunch. Flying from India back to the western USA the only thing that counts is the actual number of hours of flight and layover time; the time zone and date line crossing, if any, is not relevant. Typically cost of a continuously eastward (or continuously westward) trip versus an out and back loop is more expensive from my little bit of research. Some posts indicate that jet lag is less if you travel from west to east; and others pointed out that prevailing winds (tail winds) when traveling east might make for shorter flight durations. I expect that unless I opt for a round-the-world ticket with a couple of layovers, I will do the simple out and back type flight since airlines set it up that way for their RT fares.

For those who want yet another "explanation", here it goes:
Leave India and travel west to the west coast of USA ...
Set watch back a total of 13 hours = - 13
Leave India and travel to the east to get to the west coast of USA ...
Set watch ahead a total of 4 hours = + 4
Cross international date line - set watch back 24 hours = - 24
Cont. east crossing time zones set watch ahead 7 hours = + 7
Net of watch setting traveling eastward = - 13
Hence the math gives the same result in either direction.

palenque2012

Don't forget the rotation of the earth. This matters, no?

thirdreel

Looks like I'm in the right field!

Well, that's a work of fiction, so it doesn't necessarily apply to something that could happen in the real world.

I'm guessing, though, that "gaining a day" in the context of the novel means gaining a sunrise/sunset. Fogg thought he had been traveling for 81 days because he'd seen, in effect, 80 sunsets. However, there had been fewer than 80 sunsets in the fixed location--he'd been traveling for less than 1920 hours, so he won the bet by making it in 80 days.

So while you don't gain or lose time by traveling around the world, you do change the number of sunrises/sunsets you see. If you could travel west at the speed of one time zone per hour, starting at noon, each place you went it would be (approx) noon, and by the time you got back to your starting point, it would still be noon, 24 hours later. You'd be "chasing the sun" so you wouldn't have seen any sunrises or sunsets. Whereas if you made the same trip heading east, within 24 hours you'd see the sun set and rise twice.

So gaining or losing a day might be significant if you wanted to see one more sunset in your round-the-world trip, or if you wanted to save on one night's hotel--but it probably isn't worth the hassle of arranging it if that sunset would be seen from an airplane you're trying to sleep on.

Hal

Not really. People and planes are bound to the earth by gravity. Otherwise if you flew against the rotation of the earth, you could gain from the earth's spin, which is just over 1000 miles an hour (25,000 mile diameter divided by 24 hours for one rotation).

nycank

How ? Hotels dont travel. They stay put like lazy mules The checkin is normally between noon & 3PM and checkout is before noon. The room dont care if you took a jalopy or flew in supersonic.

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abracax

Just make sure you hit the wormhole near Fiji - darn, I've told you too much already!

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thirdreel

Well, it's a weak and hypothetical concern. But if you were away from home for 2400 hours doing a round-the-world trip, and you checked into a hotel every time it hit noon local time, your number of hotel rooms would depend on the direction you were going. If you were going west, you'd check in 99 times; if you were going east, you'd check in 101 times.

machadinha

I was never good at numbers (as Pooh Bear said, I'm just a simple bear and long words make me giddy --- or sth. to that effect), but, I think the obvious point has been missed so far;

I suppose traveling to (or rather back home from) a place roughly equidistant to your hometown, you would gain some time traveling back west (and certainly not east) relative to your place of landing, sure.

However you'd still need to leave India on say Dec. 21 13:00. No flying to anywhere will change that.

Thank you, you've been a wonderful audience

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machadinha

btw To bar any time travel, I hope we realize that if we cross the dateline going westwards we'll be there on the same or the next day (as the case as dictated by our calendars may be), not the previous day.

Right?

clivington

Yes, right. But I'm more interested in knowing where the hell you've been for the last month, Mach! Good to see you back.

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machadinha

Er, time traveling so to speak.

Thanks