Subsonic Atlantic Record
I was fortunate to fly on Concorde twice. An amazing machine.
The leading edge of the wing changed color in flight, and the inner plastic window in the “back half” of the cabin (I was part of the great unwashed) was uncomfortably warm to the touch.
On my last trip, the stews encouraged us to take as much stuff like blankets and pillows as we could, as it “was all over”...
The leading edge of the wing changed color in flight, and the inner plastic window in the “back half” of the cabin (I was part of the great unwashed) was uncomfortably warm to the touch.
On my last trip, the stews encouraged us to take as much stuff like blankets and pillows as we could, as it “was all over”...
Last edited by 421dog; 10th Feb 2020 at 00:17.
Anilv
I have yet to hear how long it took the record breakers to get allocated a stand after landing...
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Hence the question....was wondering if the fun police interfered and forced the crew to take a fuel saving out of the weather by operating at a lower CI, or if the crew were given the green light to minimise the flight time and set a new record...
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My flight back on a 787 yesterday was cost index 53 so standard for the 787. But unusually we didn’t reduce to CI0 for the quick flight time so I think they (BA) were trying to get us back before it really kicked off.
That makes sense..I haven't heard any mention of this being a deliberate attempt to beat the previous time. I just can't imagine anyone in the head shed being willing to put their names to an attempt.
Last edited by wiggy; 10th Feb 2020 at 11:40. Reason: spelling
In the majority of civil aviation flights, aircraft operators have to trade-off between the fuel consumed and time needed to fly a certain route. Aircraft equipped with Flight Management Systems (FMS) use a Cost Index (CI) parameter when optimising the flight profiles. The CI express the ratio between the cost of the fuel and the cost of the time [6]. Thus, a CI set to zero means that the cost of fuel is infinitely more important that the cost of the time and the aircraft will fly at the maximum range speed. On the other hand, the maximum value of the CI gives all the importance to the time, regardless of the needed fuel. In this case, the aircraft will fly at the maximum operating speed (VMO/MMO) with, in general, some safety margins. Airlines can reduce their operation cost by an efficient management of the CI settings among their scheduled flights. Actually, a CI value not only affects to the cruise airspeed but will determine the whole profile of the flight. This means that the optimal flight level may change and that t
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This Junior Jet Club member remembers a 1967 flight from Montreal to London on a BOAC VC10 in 5 hours and small change. Pilot announced nobody had ever done it faster! Impossible to recover the details, I imagine.
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the BA crew certainly weren’t going for the record at any stage. In fact I know they didn’t even know they’d broken it until later that day when someone told them. Conversely the virgin crew were asking for priority landing and were doing their best to break it. Some of the social media posts from the Captain of the Virgin flight are cringeworthy beyond belief. Who gives a rats ass about “doing it by burning 22000kgs” less fuel? Really? Bet he wears long sleeved shirts too.
But you have put your finger on the difficulty of establishing what the absolute shortest flight duration has been (assuming we're restricting ourselves to subsonic transatlantic regular scheduled services as our criteria).
The winner is almost certainly an instance of WestJet WS16, which operated from St John's (YYT) to Dublin in 2017-18. Its shortest flight time will likely have been significantly under 4 hours.
I'll do a bit of digging around to see if I can find out what that time was, but in the meantime if anyone has an unrestricted (business) subscription to FR24, which provides 2 years' worth of flight histories, it would be worth a look at WS16 there.
Last edited by DaveReidUK; 10th Feb 2020 at 12:03.
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I also thought the VC10 still held the record until this weekend for JFK-LHR. Others are debating what route qualifies a 'transatlantic crossing record', YYT-DUB would usually be the shortest subsonic as it's considerably less distance to cover.
Then again, I'm old and memory is the second thing to go.
Then again, I'm old and memory is the second thing to go.
If it's any consolation, this site reckons that at least up to 2009, the VC-10 held the record for the fastest westbound transatlantic crossing (LHR-JFK), though I suspect that WestJet now have that, too.
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What utter nonsense - I really can't believe what I am reading. The 747 is limited to around 320kts (I know as that's the red tape on my FS). At '800' kts, the wings would definitely fall off; no sub-sonic aircraft could fly that fast, it would break up.
I have looked at all the commercial jet parameters on my flight sim and none of them is certified for anything near 800kts.
I have looked at all the commercial jet parameters on my flight sim and none of them is certified for anything near 800kts.