Flew from LAX to LHR as a punter about 15 months ago in a BA747-400. 9 hrs 30 airborne. At one point our groundspeed on the inflight cabin things was 1300km/h (701 kts). St Johns to Lands End in 4 hours.
I saw a programme on the SR 71 recently. This bloke told a story of when they were flying over Libya post the air raids. A SAM was fired at them, they opened the throttle and out run it. No that must have been fast....
Back in the days when I was in the Navy as a "Freddie" I was sat controlling an FRA Falcon target tower in the south coast exercise areas from onboard a Type 42 (real warriors ships, air defenders rule frigate faggots). The Air France concorde made his usual morning appearance".
"Broadway 21, traffic SE, 25 tracks west, high, fast, concorde".
"Traffic in sight, trailing, do you have his groundspeed".
"600 knots".
"We can do that"
"Yeah but you cant get to New York can you"
"We could, it would take two days and a stop in Iceland"
"Oh rite, you wana know what his groundspeed is now 21"
"Sure"
"850, 875, 900, 925"
"We cant do that."
Fun of course interrupted by PWO and AAWO being killjoys "radio discipline Freddie blah blah blah"
A crab Freddie mate spun me a dit about a scrambling of the "Q" a few years back. VC10 going up the east coast like the clappers to refuel a couple of F3's. Never found out what the GS was, but apparently the mach meter was rumoured to be to the right of 0.90.
Last edited by timzsta; 4th Apr 2003 at 04:56.