ORAC

BA Flight Sets Atlantic Subsonic Record

A British Airways flight has likely broken the fastest-ever subsonic New York to London crossing time after reaching speeds of more than 800mph.

Passenger plane records over the Atlantic tumbled overnight on Saturday and Sunday as Storm Ciara hurtled towards Britain on the back of a 200mph jet stream.

According to Flightradar24 an online flight tracking service, a British Airways Boeing 747 departing JFK airport on Saturday reached Heathrow in 4 hours 56 minutes shortly after 11.20pm. It was just a minute faster than a Virgin Atlantic Airbus A350 flight which landed at Heathrow moments later, and three minutes quicker than another Virgin plane which arrived at 5.12am this morning.

Flights travelling in the opposite direction were taking more than two and a half hours longer.

BA and Virgin smashed the previous New York to London record held by Norwegian, which reached London Gatwick from JFK in 5 hours 13 minutes in January 2018. The average travel time between New York and London is around 6 hours 13 minutes.

The BA flight reached its peak ground speed of 825mph at the eastern edge of Newfoundland at about 35,000ft, according to Flightradar24's tracking tool.

Sobelena

I guess it should read that it (BA112) arrived shortly after 4:20am at LHR.

Jim59

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020...d-rain-travel/
Reporting at its best...

'This could be worst storm this century'
Storm Ciara threatens to be the worst of the century, the Met Office said today, Robert Mendick reports.
The scale of the storm - with amber warnings across all of Wales and most of England - make it the most widespread for years, although it's full toll will not be known until it begins to blow itself out from tonight.
The storm hit Britain today on the back of a Gulf Stream that is travelling at 265 miles per hour. The speed of the Gulf Stream is as fast it has ever been, said the Met Office.

11:39AM
'Fastest ever' subsonic New York to London flight
A British Airways flight has broken the record for a subsonic flight from London to New York, Flightrader24, an online flight tracking service is reporting.

(Actually Flightradar reported the record as being from New York to London!)

Bro

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-51433720

RogueOne

The Virgin 350 did it burning 22,000kg less fuel than the BA.

DaveReidUK

Well we learned from that article that:

a) modern passenger planes usually travel at about M0.85

b) 825 mph is a "phenomenal speed"

c) riding the jet stream can be very smooth or involve severe turbulence

newfoundglory

I was only thinking its so fitting for this to have been the 747.

The Queen Of The Skies won't be around much longer, at least not in big passenger airlines like BA.

Proud moment for the 747.

N1EPR

How are these things measured? From what point to what point.? Who does the record keeping?

double_barrel

How accurately can aircraft predict the best altitude and route for their journey to take advantage of high altitude winds ?
How are winds aloft measured? With what frequency and resolution ? Is it trial and error, or reports from 'company' or is there a way of 'crowd sourcing' the information? If there was an automated system for all aircraft to continually share the windspeed and direction they were encountering, that should build-up a nice picture?

So many questions....

Auxtank

Well done BA - good stuff. Supersonic record and now subsonic record - no mean feat (wind up the jacksy is often uncomfortable and can cause mayhem in the galley)

Start here Brother...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Tracks

DaveReidUK

The convention is from wheels-off to wheels-on, which has the advantage that it's one of the metrics that the airlines measure. Having said that, there is no central repository of this data that covers all airlines.

You can usually get a reasonable approximation from FR24, accurate to within a minute or two.

421dog

“...Gulf Stream that is travelling at 265 miles per hour. The speed of the Gulf Stream is as fast it has ever been, said the Met Office”

All of those container ships must be having a bit of a thrill...

gearlever

Love the media

fokker1000

I've sat in 200KT jet, but didn't get wet!!!!

Wasn't so brilliant on the way out with 185KTS on the nose...

TwinAisle

Incidentally, Norwegian NEVER held the record - the previous best time of 5h1m was held by a BOAC VC10 from 40-odd years ago....

DaveReidUK

Norwegian held the New York-London record.

MarkerInbound

I wouldn’t say the aircraft is predicting the best route. As pointed out earlier the routes during busy times are organized by ATC. Modern aircraft can tell you what the optimum altitude is based on the aircraft's current weight (which it calculates continuously) and the winds aloft forecasts which the crew enter into the flight management computer. Traditional winds aloft forecasts (FBs in Met speak) come out every 6 hours. However with so many aircraft now able to send winds aloft data it is very much as you say crowd sourced data that is is constantly being up dated. On a busy route like the eastbound NAT tracks during the evening you could reload fresh wind data every 30 minutes if you were bored.

golfyankeesierra

Hooray, BA sets a supposed record on JFK-LHR.
Just like Lufthansa probably holds the JFK-FRA, Air France the JFK-CDG and KLM the JFK-AMS records
Whats the big deal?

Now for the really impressive groundspeeds (and records), have a look at groundspeedrecords.com

lansen

Dicksize matters.

421dog

Was in G-BOAG when it made the second best LHR-JFK run. (At the time, as the very accomadating flight crew informed me)

Way more fun than anyone should be able to have with pants on...