United Airlines (GLA & EDI)

[timboab]

Hi, I was wondering if anyone knew why the UA flights from Glasgow & Edinburgh have been taking sooooo much longer to fly to EWR this last week.

Have noticed that the route they are taking is much further south than the normal.

Flight times have been around 1 hour longer!

[Fairdealfrank]

Weather conditions over the Atlantic? Position of the jet stream? Particularly adverse headwinds? Combination of these?

[EMB-145LR]

The jetstream has been incredibly strong recently. In fact some of UALs 757 flights from Western Europe have been forced to stop for fuel enroute as flight times have been up to an hour longer with the headwinds. Just last week I operated a turn from Chicago to Winnipeg. The outbound flight ended up being 3.4 hours gate to gate, on the way back we had a 200 knot tailwind and ended up blocking in at 1.9 hours. That was on a flight of only 613 miles each way, so you can imagine the knock on effect to Trans Atlantic traffic.

[timboab]

wow - I had no idea that the winds could make such an impact.

To add 1 hour onto a 6/7 hour flight seems amazing - it is also interesting to see how many different routes the planes can take.

It surprised me that the Glasgow flight took a north-west route where the edinburgh plane leaving exactly the same time went more westerly over ireland !

[easyflyer83]

Westbound is typically 7.5/8 hours anyway but yeah the strength of wind can add significantly to even a 4 hour flight.

[eastern wiseguy]

@ Timboab

This might help


North Atlantic Tracks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Tracks)

[gorter]

I was flying at the weekend from the south of Spain back to the uk. In the descent we had a head wind of 180 kts between fl360 and fl320. The last time I saw a wind approaching that was over the Arabian gulf. If the aircraft have a normal TAS of say 440kts then all of a sudden you're cruising at less than 300kts ground speed. That will ruin your day on a trams Atlantic crossing.

[timboab]

thanks guys - i hope the wind turns direction for my flight westbound in 2 weeks time!!!!!