He may have been referring to a non-direct flight with an Atlantic route? eg, going Seattle to Chennai will be ~24 hours of travel either via Frankfurt or Dubai

He may have been referring to a non-direct flight with an Atlantic route? eg, going Seattle to Chennai will be ~24 hours of travel either via Frankfurt or Dubai. Thinking of the magic of flight in broad strokes, I can see how you'd call that going across the Pacific, just not quite literally.