Tail wind effect on Airliners
Good morning ,
I hope this question wont be seen as stupid but I cannot quite understand the following ,
Recently flew to Cyprus ex Man to Paphos on a Thomson 767 wide body thing,- 2 seat aisle 4 seats and then another two seats. Huge winglets and big engines with much take off thrust.
The seat back tv screen had a scrolling route and fed information about the height , ground speed and wind speed, plus compass headings. and outside Air temp , the trip was very quickly over with a flight of 4.5 hours
I am struggling to work this out Tail wind advised at 36K ft as 117 mph ground speed advised at 612 mph, to some of you this may sound a daft question but at what speed would that sort of A/c fall apart, or is the aircraft structure only actually feeling the effect of traveling at ground speed less tail wind..?
The flight was also super smooth not a jot of turbulence, apart from a sort of Slam Dunk landing at Paphos!
Peter R-B
Lancashire