American Airlines flight from Dallas takes 12 hours to travel to LA

The flight was forced to turn around after a volcanic eruption presented too high a risk. Photo / Google Maps, NZ Herald

On 28 May, an American Airlines flight departed Dallas Fort Worth, Texas.

Twelve hours later, it landed in Los Angeles, California, a trip that should take just over three hours.

The worst part? The passengers were supposed to be in Tokyo.

More than seven hours into the route to Tokyo, the flight was forced to make a U-turn while flying over the North Pacific Ocean due to "weather conditions".

The weather in question was a volcanic eruption on a peninsular off the east coast of Russia, which was close to the planned route.

Other carriers flying a similar route that day decided to add an hour to the flight time and fly around the area, according to the aviation website One Mile at a Time.

United Airlines flight UA7 from Houston and UA837 from San Francisco both completed their journey to Tokyo.

Unfortunately, those on the Dallas-Tokyo flight were airborne for almost 12 hours, which is about as long as the entire journey should have taken. However, passengers ended up travelling a distance of just 1987 km.

The mistake was picked up by a man on Twitter under the username JonNYC. "Supposedly a volcano just went off in/near Asia, may be impacting ICN/NRT flying for a bit," he initially tweeted.

Yikes. 11hr flight from DFW to… LAX pic.twitter.com/WlfcJypxfk

— June, June, Hannah. 🇺🇦 (@GillyH2o) May 29, 2022

This is not the first time an unexpected event has caused issues for a flight. In April, Cathay-Pacific accidentally claimed the record for the world's longest flight.

The airline's New York to Hong Kong service flew over the Atlantic Ocean, UK, southern Europe and Central Asia in order to avoid Russian airspace.

The trip was 16,618km, making it the longest distance flown by a commercial flight.