Tail wind tall tale?
 

I read yesterday an item written by a reputable person who is also a private pilot, seemingly indicating that he experienced a 168 mph tail wind on January 1, providing a ground speed of 657 mph, I believe heading east across the US toward Washington, D.C. Is that possible? I can't provide a link, but it's in a tweet dated January 1 of @JamesFallows.

200kts+ jetstreams are not uncommon .That's 230mph+.

I can't provide any private flight tall tailwind tales, but in the 90's flew in a UTA DC-10-30 from MIA-CDG in 5hrs 20mins approx due to extremely strong tailwinds. Like being on a Transatlantic travelator ;-)

I remember my mother, who was deathly afraid of flying until she discovered the miracle combination of valium and bourbon, bragging about setting a speed record between KLAX and KLGA aboard a Convair 990 Coronado in 1963. Total elapsed time was slightly more than four and one-half hours; they had ridden a strong jet stream the entire journey.

- Ed

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....2203045c71.jpg

Landing a CV990 at LGA must have been fun

There is currently (Thurs 3rd) an area of 160kt jet stream winds positioned over the north-east USA. This would have been positoned over the center of the country previously.

Weather model charts show it as being about 500nm long (E-W) and 200 wide N-S), with much lower speeds outside that region (and at lower altitudes). A flight plan would be able to take advantage of the winds, but the whole route could not be at top speed.

My "record" is 715 kts over the Pacific, with a similar tailwind.

Many years ago I had the displeasure of encountering the Mediterranean jet en route Akrotiri to Luqa. It was much worse than forecast; after the first couple of beers (post landing!) we did some sums and worked out the average headwind was 200kt.

I had a 200kt headwind once from SIN- LHR in a 777 - looking down over Romania we were just about catching traffic on the Interstate/Autobahn.................

I did a quick flip through some flight tracks on 1Jan, and the fastest I could find was a B787 LAX-LHR. Peak ground speed was 735mph, with a filed speed of 564mph, giving a tail wind of about 171mph.

The total flight time was about 45mins shorter than average, because only a limited duration was spent inside the jet-stream. The track was longer in distance than the great-circle route, but still faster overall.

Obviously flights in the opposite direction use a more polar route to avoid the head winds.

Tail Winds
 

I came back on MH1 23rd December 2018, 2 hours into the flight the screen was showing 172kph tail wind and OAT -71°C
Nothing spectacular but could have been chilly if someone opened a window.

There are I think size limit on images. As I recall, pixels and file size both restricted. The error messages are not particularly explanatory (British understatement:).

Perhaps not perfect but I have a speedometer on my phone which operates via GPS. On a flight from Manchester to Tel Aviv in January 2017 on an easyJet A320, I recorded a maximum speed of 646mph. And we only landed about 30 minutes ahead of time. So 657mph seems perfectly reasonable.

My uncle reported from his Qantas flight over the GAFA that the wind was 270/270 (270 kts from the west.) rather fast.

Virgin Atlantic 787 - 801mph ground speed yesterday over Pennsylvania - 48 minutes early.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weath...=.d17220d33887

On a flight from Manila to Narita in the early 90's on a 747 - 200 photographed the no3 INS showing a groundspeed in excess of 700Kts and a wind on the tail of 200+ knots. There was no turbulence. Next day on the way back a much lower altitude was requested to try to get underneath - not much better.