A British Airways (BA) flight broke the record for the fastest subsonic flight between New York and London, reaching a top speed of more than 800 mph (1,287 km / h).
The Boeing 747 flew overnight from Saturday to Sunday and reached its destination in four hours and 56 minutes, as Storm Ciara headed for the United Kingdom.
“The flight was traveling on a much stronger jet stream than usual, with winds of over 200 mph propelling the aircraft,” said CNN senior meteorologist Brandon Miller.
“The supercharged jet stream is also responsible for feeding Storm Ciara, which caused massive gusts of wind and waves in the UK, Ireland and other parts of northern Europe this weekend. end.
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“The jet stream is a fast moving “river of air”, high in the atmosphere, at the height of commercial airliners. The jet stream is responsible for transporting weather systems around the planet. ”
The plane landed at Heathrow Airport at 4:43 a.m., almost two hours earlier than expected. According to Flightradar24, an online flight tracking service, its maximum speed during the flight was 825 mph (1,327 km / h).
The flight tracking platform estimates that the average time it takes a plane to fly between London and New York is six hours and 13 minutes.
Flightradar24 announced the news of this record flight on its Twitter account, writing: “If we are not mistaken, BA is now resuming Norwegian’s NY-London subsonic crossing.”
The service added that the British Airways flight was one minute faster than a Virgin Airbus A350 flight, which landed at Heathrow moments later. He beat another Virgin plane which landed half an hour later three minutes.
The three flights comfortably broke the previous record of five hours and 13 minutes, held by Norwegian since January 2018.
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Although the BA plane was apparently timed faster than the speed of sound – 767 mph – it would not have crossed the sound barrier as it was being pushed by the air around it. Even at over 800mph, the 747 traveled much slower than the speed of sound compared to the air around it.
A BA spokesperson said, “We always prioritize safety over speed records, but our highly trained drivers took advantage of the conditions to bring customers back to London well in advance.”
Storm Ciara made landfall in the UK over the weekend and severely disrupted travel elsewhere. Two of the busiest airports in Europe – one in Frankfurt, Germany, the other in Amsterdam, the Netherlands – each failed more than 100 flights due to the storm.
A company spokesperson told CNN that BA, like all other airlines operating flights to and from the United Kingdom, was affected by Storm Ciara – and had canceled and merged some of its flights others.
Fastest across the Atlantic tonight from New York to London so far is #BA112 at 4hr56m. #VS4 in 4:57, and #VS46 in 4:59. https://t.co/gfYoHGV3Y6https://t.co/kMhjCqdEtt
If we’re not mistaken, BA now retakes the fastest subsonic NY-London crossing from Norwegian. pic.twitter.com/Sr1GPeAjuh
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) February 9, 2020
