I’ve checked various booking sites and airlines and they all show a return Tokyo flight that’s over an hour shorter (both legs are direct). I know the gulf stream affects long-haul flights but this is so short. Anyone know the answer?
Edit: to be clear I’m talking about [flight duration](https://imgur.com/a/RU70l2O), not time zones
6 comments
Tokyo is 1 hour ahead of Taiwan 🙂
Flight time are not the actual in-the-air time. It’s from departing from the gate until arrival at the gate. So airport congestion also need to be taken into account. Gulfstream is also pretty important even with short flight time.
If you look at history of the flight, you can see that [TPE bound flight](https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/br197) are actually longer by about 30 minute compared to [NRT-bound flight](https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/br198).
Could be tailwind?
Flight time is considerably quicker from Perth, West Australia to Sydney in the east.
Sometimes it’s as much as an hour earlier due to the jet streams.
An interesting article to back that up:
https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/aviation/how-planes-are-getting-to-eastern-states-faster-ng-b88941563z.amp
Tailwinds. It’s the same when flying from Japan to Manila (5.5 hours) and on return it’s only 3.5 hours or less.
Jet streams. Wind is usually from the west. Japan to HK is the same.
4:20 flight time, nice