A British Airways (BA) flight has broken the record for the fastest-ever subsonic flight between New York and London, reaching a top speed of more than 800mph (1,287km/h). The Boeing 747 aircraft flew overnight from Saturday to Sunday and reached its destination in four hours and 56 minutes, as Storm Ciara sped towards the United Kingdom. (edition.cnn.com) さらに...
A good moment to remember Capt. Charles Blair, who flew his own P-51 Mustang,"Excalibur III," over the same route at 37,000 feet in 7 hours, 48 minutes in 1951. Maybe you've seen this a/c at Air & Space Museum in DC?
There are several NATS tracks both westbound and eastbound. Selected on a daily basis. Winds and other weather are taken in to account. Usually, you take advantage of the jet stream eastbound and avoid it on westbound, if you can. So no, you cannot assume 2+ hours the other way.
Flightaware says the inbound flight for that aircraft was in the air for 7h35m. The route (well north of the eastbound flight) was ~300 miles longer and actually tracked ~100 miles WEST of Happy Valley-Goose Bay.
The grand old lady of the skies still hauls a-- after all of these years. Look at some of the cargo flights from ICN to ANC, they are keeping the beans hot on some of those flights as well. The spirit of Tex Johnson is alive and well. (would be interesting to put a Citation X though a similar flight track to see what kind of numbers it would put up)
Something is not adding up, or perhaps I'm blind. When tracking VS4 and BA112 on Flightaware, is why I said BA only held the record for 9 minutes. It states BA112 Take-off JFK: Saturday 08-Feb-20 06:48PM EST Landing LHR Sunday 09-Feb-2020 04:42AM GMT (+1) 5hr 27min total travel includes taxi time @ JFK and LHR. Removing the 33 min taxi time gives you the 4:56 actual flight time.
However Virgin VS4 take-off JFK Saturday 08-Feb-2020 06:59PM EST Landing LHR: Sunday 09-Feb-2020 04:46AM GMT (+1) 5hr 7 min total travel time includes taxi time @JFK and LHR. Removing the 20 min taxi time gives you a 4:47 actual flight time.
Hence BA only held the record for actually 4 minutes, and were beat on the record by 9 minutes.
Not when the air pattern around the craft is moving faster than the air speed of the craft itself.The airliner never achieved a supersonic airspeed. It was a flying at normal cruise speed with a very strong tailwind, which initialized a ground speed which would’ve been greater than the speed of sound, had it been achieved in still air. Must have been 1 serious jetstream blast to enable not 1 but 3 airliners to break an old speed record
Airspeed is the relative velocity of the aircraft to the air around it. So, irrespective of the tailwind, the airspeed was never more than than Mach 0.88, the cruise speed of a B747. It could not have been 710kts.
Collin Seftel before you pontificate, FlightAware indicated 710Kts not me, and I did not say it was the over the ground speed. Do a replay of the flight if you don't believe me. I think you're forgetting the difference between the over the ground speed and true airspeed. The speed at which you break the sound barrier varies at different altitudes with true airspeed. Also 747 is capable of cruising at more than Mach 0.88.
It was! A very strong jet stream. Part of Storm Ciara which it the UK and Western Europe the next day! Of course, it’s GROUNDSPEED. Can't be anything* else if you know a thing or two about aviation and nav.
800 mph airspeed? Really? A 74 went faster than the speed of sound? Boeing should have marketed them as supersonic passenger planes and maybe they’d still be building them. Perhaps the 800+mph is really “ground speed”??
I think they changed the article, now they only say "top speed" instead of airspeed. But 747 does boast with have one of highest cruise speed (0.88 Mach) comparing to Airbus 330's (0.83 Mach)
Transonic region from mach 0.75 to mach 1.2, design affected by area rule in that shock waves are reduced by constant area cross section. Wings increase the cross section. The increased upper deck length of the 747-300/400 had the effect of making use of the area rule to gain high mach possibility with reduced drag. Convair 990 has pieces added to take advantage making it the fastest commercial airliner to date. A380 has configuration at wing root to take advantage. I understand it was by chance, not design, that the 747 was able to take advantage another reason the -400 is faster and uses less fuel than the -200. Now don't ask me why the short upper deck on the -8F.
They definitely are capable of flying that fast, but I can't imagine them flying much faster than Mach 0.84 or 0.85. The Bean counters wouldn't like that lol.
Some may not realize that airspeed (measured by the ASI and is essentially the speed through the air) is NOT the same as GROUNDSPEED (which is speed over the ground and is used in navigation- time, distance, speed). Clearly, this was groundspeed and journalists unless they are aviation journals likely don’t know the difference. Nor do some readers. Ask an expert..... BTW, speed of sound varies with altitude among other variables, also.
Although LHR doesn't have a night curfew, flights between 23:30 and 06:00 are restricted. From https://www.heathrow.com/company/local-community/noise/operations/night-flights: "There is no formal ban on night flights at Heathrow but since the 1960s, the Government has placed restrictions on them. Heathrow has some of the strictest restrictions of any hub airport in Europe in terms of movements permitted between 11:30pm and 6:00am. Heathrow is restricted to 5,800 take-offs and landings a year during these times."
Wolfgang is right! Max landing weight for B744 is 652,000lbs. Max takeoff weight is 910,000lbs. With a reduced burn rate of say 20,000lbs/hr and a flight time of 6 hours, you would burn 180,000 lbs and be almost 100,000lbs overweight on arrival. Unless you put your faith in the weather forecast and loaded less fuel. Probably not wise!
There's KIAS, true air speed, ground speed, all in kts, which one and for how long? A little spurt from tail wind that hit 800mph? Could be ground speed, for some unstated stint, possibly even TAS. Out of the millions of jetliner flights across decades, did this really break any record?
I'll bet that, looking at the track log, was just a normal transatlantic scheduled flight, and Mach limited by Gander and Shanwick. Since, if this BAA can pull this off on some filed NAT track, then so could every other similar jet aircraft on that same track.
It was a scheduled flight, but thanks to that storm Clara, and the tail winds it created along the jet stream, 2 other craft did pull it off..BA only held the record 9 mins before Virgin took it in an A350
When you read stuff like this in the tabloids you gotta remember who the audience is and what they know or don’t! Clearly, we pros know it was GROUNDSPEED. All the rest is irrelevant to the public. As others have mentioned, this was an unusually string jet stream, part of Storm Ciara , which hit Western Europe and caused gales, flooding and structural damage in the UK. I think you must mean BA, otherwise known as British Airways to give its full name. The BAA is another entity altogether!
Then again, an SR-71 did New York to London in 1 hour, 54 minutes, 56.4 seconds; returning to Los Angeles from London in 3 hours, 47 minutes, & 39 seconds despite having to “slow down” over the US.
But this article is about a COMMERCIAL AIRLINES with hundreds of people onboard. Not an old military jet than goes supersonic. It wasn’t a race, it was being in the right place at the right time. And your point? I bet that SR-71 didn’t go JFKLHR........
Not about liking it, mate. It’s about context! And if you want credibility in writing, you better know how to spell! Dam, dam dam busters! Try damn for a change. Just sayin’....there, I did something for ya!
They're flying with the jetstream though. The aircraft in its own envelope was doing Mach 0.86 (which is within nominal operations). However the combined effect gives them a good bit of ground speed. It's the same for taking off against the wind. If your takeoff speed is 160 knots but your headwind is 20 knots, your takeoff speed would be 140 knots.