On Sunday evening the time has come: The Kansas City Chiefs will meet the San Francisco 49ers in Superbowl LVIII. Millions of fans are looking forward to the biggest football event of the year. It’s almost as exciting to see whether the most prominent spectator will also be in the stadium. Pop megastar Taylor Swift is in a relationship with Kansas City player Travis Kelce – and is actually on tour in Asia. Now she’s rushing around the world.
The schedules are tightly scheduled: the last concert of their “Eras” tour in Asia began on Saturday at 6 p.m. local time in Tokyo, Japan, and on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. the starting whistle for the grand finale of the American football season will be blown in Las Vegas . To arrive on time, Swift must travel nearly 9,000 kilometers, cross nine time zones and even jump over the date line. Many fans were worried whether she could even do it. At least the beginning has already been made: Swift took off from Tokyo in a private Vista Jet jet at around 3:30 p.m. German time and is now on her way to her first stop, Los Angeles.
In fact, the stress is significantly less than you would think. Two factors in particular play into Swift’s hands: She flies on a private jet, so she wasn’t tied to a fixed departure time and didn’t have to endure any airport queues. And the 17-hour time difference between the two venues provides a convenient travel buffer.
The calculation is actually simple: Swift’s current shows usually last around 3:15 hours. The concert ended at around 9:30 p.m. German time. The travel time from the venue to Haneda Airport is approximately half an hour. Experts estimated a few days ago that she could then be in the air at 11:30 p.m., including a security check and a route to the jet itself. This corresponds to 3:30 p.m. German time. So Swift took off in time. The time difference from Las Vegas is even greater. It was 6:30 a.m. when we started – on Saturday morning.
Now comes the longest part of the journey. Swift flies almost 12 hours across the Atlantic to Los Angeles, and after a refueling stop we continue to Las Vegas. Because she doesn’t have to change planes and nothing is reloaded, the long waiting times that we mere mortals are used to are eliminated. Swift should hit Las Vegas by Saturday evening local time at the latest – and thus have more than enough time until the game starts on Sunday afternoon. Thousands of people are watching at the same time to see whether this works: You can follow the flight here.
To ensure that the tightly scheduled travel plans were guaranteed to work, the private airline had spared no effort for its prominent passenger. In Tokyo, there wasn’t just one jet waiting for Swift, but two, probably so that the singer could take off on time even in the event of a failure. By the way, the name of the flight is a nice allusion: the jet is listed as “VistaJet (The Football Era)”, a reference to both the tour name and the Superbowl. By the way, the second jet that appeared in the flight tracker is called “The Backup Quarterback”.
After the game, Swift doesn’t stay home long. They’re heading to Australia on Wednesday – where the next concert on the Eras tour is on Friday (local time). In total, Swift covers over 20,000 kilometers for the football trip. Let’s hope the Chiefs win.
Sources: AP News, NPR, Flightradar,
