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The professor had flown many times before, on flights considerably slower than this one

The professor was not mentally ill, eccentric or anything like that and his watch was functioning perfectly

This has nothing to do with time zones

Only a physics professor (or anybody in a technical profession really, but most likely a physicist) would have been likely to make this statement. Anybody else would have commented on how fast it was.

By "slowest", he was referring to speed, not time

Think relativity

Something to do with time dilation?

Surely it has to do with the earth's rotation? When you're flying west, especially at a lower latitude, the speed at which the ground
is traveling relative to the core due to the earth's rotation is quite significant (1,000 mph or so at the equator). The atmosphere, of course,
moves with the ground. The air the plane is flying in, therefore, is moving east at a very high velocity. The plane is moving west as it flies,
but only relative to the atmosphere, not the center of the earth. Indeed, the plane may have still been moving east with reference to the
center of the earth, despite flying at a high air velocity west.

Not that kind of relativity lol

This is the fastest passenger jet ever, it goes approx 1,500 Km/h.
The earth rotates west to east at 1,600 Km/h.
As the plane was traveling in the opposite direction, the professor has in effect, gone the slowest he had ever gone before, since at no point in his life had he ever gone slower than 1,600Km/h

It's to do with being close to the equator. 1.5 MACH is probably slightly faster than the rotation of the earth at this latitude, probably close to 0. For illustration's sake, lets say it is zero.Effectively the plane took off vertically, waited for the earth to rotate underneath, then landed vertically.

lol I didn't realise about the importance of the equator. Glad you pointed that out 8-)

He flew the opposite direction around the planet. Though direct, it's much longer.