Performing salaah on the plane when passing different time zones

Q: My question is related to Salaah and flying by air.

Sometime ago we flew from Australia to Canada. We set out at around 7.00 am on Tuesday, and we reached at around 7.15 am Tuesday, on the same date. The flight was 17 hours, and in this time we didn't read any Salaah. In fact, the next Salaah we read was Dhuhr almost 24 hours later. Is this correct?

However, when we were returning to Australia, we lost a day, so basically a whole day's worth of Salaah became qadha. We jumped a whole day, or we lost a whole day, when we were crossing the international date line. How does this work? How do we calculate Salaah in these situations? Were we supposed to read any Salaah on the way to Canada keeping in mind the Hadith about after Dajjaal comes one day will be equal to a year, and so forth. Hence Salaah would have been calculated according to its normal time, as Nabi Sallallahu Alayhi Wa Salam had advised his Sahaabah? 

A: Yes.

In this situation, you should do the qadha. The right thing was that you should read the namaaz on the plane at its time without making it qadha.

And Allah Ta'ala (الله تعالى) knows best.

 

Answered by:

Mufti Ebrahim Salejee (Isipingo Beach)