As the new year arrives soon, I was curious to know what happens during flight when the time comes to recieve the new year.
The airline offers wine or champagne to the passangers?
Is there happy new year greetings to the fellow pasangers and crew?
Any experience?

Nothing happens.

I though so...

I guess it depends on the crew. Few years back, the captain did the countdown over the PA and the FAs made sure everybody had something to drink before the midnight hour. This was on a DFW-LGW flight.

Sorry, let me retract my statement. I actually seldom fly overnight flight on New Year's Eve. I was thinking about Christmas Eve... sorry.

Flying from Chicago to Frankfurt, the crew did a countdown and we had champagne in Business Class.

My experience is nothing happens.

But on most flights long enough for it to be an issue, trying to work out when, with a 6-10 hour time change, it's actually going to be midnight where the plane is will beat counting sheep as a way of getting to sleep.

Might be different on those rare overnight flights (like London-Cape Town) with no real time change. But if an airline went out of its way to keep me awake with gratuitous PA announcements at midnight, I'd never fly them again.

We are flying from San Francisco to Hong Kong on December 31st. Since the plane flies across the International Dateline, we won't even get to do a midnight countdown as we'll just "jump ahead" one day.

I'll report back if there's anything special on our flight.

<b>flanneruk</b>,

It's very easy on US-EU flights.

Most leave in the early, late evening. These days most flights have Flight Maps on the screen that reports &quot;Time at present position&quot; so it's no mystery as far as figuring a good time to celebrate. After all, folks in Nova Scotia will celebrate New Years 2-3 hours ahead of people residing in the US midwest/mountain time zones.

Here is an example:

Let's say DFW-LGW departs 8pm DFW time. Within 2 hours of flyimg time it's at a position where the present local time is midnight.

Most times the dinner service is just being wrapped up, so the lights are still on and majority of the people are still fully awake. The few that passed out earlier? well, it's New Years and if waking up for a little celebration upsets the few, so be it. YMMV.


Reporting from Istanbul.