United Airlines delay disappoints fliers looking to celebrate New Year’s Eve twice

A six-hour flight delay ruined some United Airlines passengers’ chances to celebrate the start of 2024 twice.

The Chicago-based company was promoting a “time travel” flight scheduled to depart Guam at 7:35 a.m. Jan. 1 and land in Hawaii at 6:50 p.m. Dec. 31, allowing passengers another chance to celebrate the new year.

“Time travel is real,” United Airlines wrote in a social media post. “You only live once, but you can celebrate New Year’s Eve twice!”

But the flight didn’t leave until about 1:50 p.m., and it arrived in Honolulu at 12:34 a.m. New Year’s Day — too late for an on-the-ground celebration and about 5 hours and 45 minutes later than scheduled, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.

“Ouch, what a sad delay,” one Instagram user commented on a United Airlines post about the flight.

“Well this didn’t age well, since the flight arrived in 2024,” another comment read.

United Airlines declined to answer questions about the delayed flight. It wasn’t clear what caused the delay.