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Storm Ciara helps plane beat transatlantic flight record
- keyle 7y ago> Despite travelling faster than the speed of sound the plane would not have broken the sonic barrier as it was helped along by fast-moving air. It makes sense but that is still fascinating to me...
- jungturk 7y agoWell _all_ aircraft are traveling faster than the speed of sound with respect to much of the universe, but not relative to their surrounding airstreams...
- jsjohnst 7y agoI’ve been on a plane that did this before, only our jet stream current was a bit slower and thus our ground speed was hovering right around 800mph for most of the duration. The turbulence was rough going in and out of the jet stream, but while “in it”, it was about like any other normal flight. We ended up shaving over an hour off the flight time (SFO - LHR, might’ve been 90min in fact), but alas, due to the “law of early flights”, we then wasted a lot of that time penalty boxed waiting for an open gate.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago>The fastest transatlantic crossing belongs to BA Concorde, which flew from New York to London in two hours 52 minutes and 59 seconds in 1996 - hitting a top speed of 1,350 mph. That was the fastest commercial flight. The fastest transatlantic crossing by an aircraft was the SR-71 in 1974: 1 hour 55 minutes Average speed over 1800 mph https://tacairnet.com/2015/09/02/the-sr-71s-record-breaking-transatlantic-crossing/ https://tacairnet.com/2015/09/02/the-sr-71s-record-breaking-...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- themodelplumber 7y ago> 1 hour 55 minutes Average speed over 1800 mph It felt weird that my first reaction was to wonder what took so long. For some reason I was thinking that surely the Blackbird could make the crossing about 60 minutes faster than listed. Looking at a map, I saw that the air line distance from Fortaleza to Dakar is just over 1,900 miles though. So I'm thinking "transatlantic" must mean more than my own basic definition. (Plus I don't know if these locations would have enough runway for the SR-71, or if the reason we haven't heard of faster is because US taxpayers aren't footing the gas bill to arrange a shorter route)
- smoyer 7y agoThe blackbirds have to show down to refuel.
- themodelplumber 7y agoI don't understand. Are you saying they refueled over the Atlantic while setting this record?
- chipsa 7y agoMost long distance Blackbird flights involved taking off at low fuel weights, then refueling shortly after take off. So yes, the record probably involved refueling over the Atlantic.
- anonsivalley652 7y agoThey refilled immediately after takeoff. Then, if they got a full tank of JP-7 around NYC, that gives them a one-way range of 3250 miles, which is less than the 2999 nautical miles of LGA -> LHR. The SR-71's range is a hair over 3200 nautical miles. Getting a full tank of the special JP-7 or landing around LHR would be do or die time, because that would be just about bingo fuel.
- jsjohnst 7y ago
- aeleos 7y agoIt looks like this is not the fastest commercial flight but the fastest subsonic flight. The Blackbird and Concord records you are talking about are a different category.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y agoThe Concorde was definitely supersonic. That was the whole point of the aircraft to enable commercial supersonic travel.
- zamadatix 7y agoI think there was some confusion on what the "this" keyword is referencing in the comment (one of the reasons I hate it in code :))
- mcv 7y agoIt's weird to see people continuing to argue about this, when the article itself makes pretty clear that this is about the subsonic record. Concorde and Blackbird are completely irrelevant. Of course they're faster, but that's not the point. The entire reason a subsonic flight could go at speeds normally only possible to supersonic aircraft, is because of the speed of the jet stream driven by Ciara. The plane is flying at subsonic speeds within a moving pocket of air that adds quite a lot to that speed. That's the interesting part about this story.
- Piskvorrr 7y agoIndeed, the airspeed/groundspeed distinction continues to confuse people. The plane still moves at subsonic speed, as that's w/r/t surrounding air.
- anonsivalley652 7y agoTL;DR: Rocket plane: hold my beer A rocket-powered plane vaguely similar to the X-15 could cut that to about ½ to 1/3 the time. That would likely require a space suit, an RCS, ablative coatings and exotic materials. Ejection seat?: good luck with that over mach 3.
- baq 7y agoa ballistic flight could do that distance in 30 minutes. musk wants to commercialize spacex's new big rocket - aptly named "starship" - in that way. we'll see if he can get over environmental concerns, the noise during takeoff will be life threatening.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoThe Kerbal player in me has a tentative solution: add a first stage for takeoff assists made of jet engines, not rocket engines. It would still be noisy, but perhaps not that noisy; after boosting it to some sensible altitude, the stage would detach and Starship's rockets would take over. The jet engine stage would of course be recoverable (parachutes, or it could fly itself back like a drone, because why not).
- pintxo 7y agoYou mean this [1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipTwo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipTwo
- hanniabu 7y agoWe must put a stop to performance enhancing storms! /s
- madengr 7y agoI’m surprised they didn’t slow down to conserve fuel and arrive on-time. In the USA, if your flight is more than 20 minutes early, you are usually stuck on the tarmac waiting for a gate. 80 minutes of fuel for that plane must be very expensive. Is it possibly to fly that plane, at say 200 knots ground speed, and save on fuel? Or are they stuck at their speed they filed in the flight plan, to keep traffic separation?
- t0mas88 7y agoIt doesn't always work to go slower. The speed of least drag is an airspeed, not a ground speed. And commercial jet engines are most efficient around 90% thrust, not at lower settings. So going slower can make you less efficient.
- t-writescode 7y agoDoes less efficient result in more total fuel loss, in this specific case, since the engine will be running for a different amount of time?
- t0mas88 7y agoCan't really tell without knowing their weight and available cruising levels. But in general you should not run a commercial jet engine at lower thrust settings. The optimum altitude as calculated by the flight management system is essentially the altitude at which 90% thrust gets you the best cruise speed. That's also why flying low is really bad for fuel consumption, you're going to have to decrease thrust and you'll be aerodynamically less efficient at the same time.
- WalterBright 7y agoAt lower altitude the jet has to push aside a lot more air.
- NikolaeVarius 7y ago
- t0mas88 7y agoNot a record. This flight got to 717kt, but the fastest record for a 747 is 752kt: https://groundspeedrecords.com/top-3-models/?terms-filter=15&aircraft-manufacturer=Boeing https://groundspeedrecords.com/top-3-models/?terms-filter=15...
- heyflyguy 7y agoThis is nothing, one time I flew from Midland to Dallas in a Cessna 172 in an hour and 20 minutes. My ground speed exceeded 180 knots at times!
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 7y agoOn that note, it seems that the amount of turbulence has been increasing over the last few decades as a consequence of global warming?
- dghughes 7y agoI see people talking about this but they all seem to have a hard time understanding air speed and ground speed. The way I like to explain it is imagine a person walking up an escalator. Your total speed is your walking speed (air speed) plus the escalator speed combined (ground speed). Just walking up regular stairs would be like an aircraft flying with no wind. It can also happen in reverse. If you walked down the up escalator your walking speed (air speed) may be equal to the escalator. Your total speed (ground speed) may even be zero. Aircraft leaving London going to NY were fighting the wind their ground speed was reduced.
- cranium 7y agoAlso why it's still a subsonic flight even with a ground speed greater than the speed of sound (~1200 km/h). Edit: as explained in the article, hum.
- aerodog 7y agoSpeed of sound is 767 mph. Without the wind, they were at 801 mph, which is still well over the sound barrier. I still don't understand.
- ezzaf 7y agoThey weren't at 801mph airspeed. The article didn't make it clear exactly, but: "The Boeing 747-436 reached speeds of 825 mph (1,327 km/h) as it rode a jet stream accelerated by Storm Ciara." Ie max ground speed 1327km/h. And: "The jet stream reached speeds of 260 mph (418 km/h) on Sunday morning, according to BBC Weather." So if their max ground speed coincides with max wind speed and the wind was perfectly tail, their air speed would have been closer to 909km/hour.
- mcv 7y agoThe article says it's "slower than 801 mph", but sadly doesn't specify how much slower. The ground speed was 825 mph, so if Ciara is so impressive, I'd expect it to give a bigger boost than a measly 24 mph. The article doesn't specify the unassisted airspeed, unfortunately. Considering the jet stream was moving at 260 mph, naive math would suggest the air speed was 565 mph.
- gorgoiler 7y agoIf it’s windy enough could they have done a 180 on arrival and landed into wind blowing at the usual landing speed, coming down near vertically with respect to the ground? Here’s a bush plane doing this at 40 knots: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7vP13XPMNfc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7vP13XPMNfc
- JorgeGT 7y agoTechnically yes, but the jet stream blows at high altitude.
- rdsubhas 7y ago> The four hours and 56 minutes flight arrived at Heathrow Airport 80 minutes ahead of schedule on Sunday morning. > According to Flightradar24, an online flight tracking service, it beat a previous five hours 13 minutes record held by Norwegian. Extremely poor proofreading there from BBC. 4:56 hour scheduled flight when the previous record was 5:13? The numbers simply don't make any sense. Original numbers: https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1226395432252780544?s=19 https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1226395432252780544... > 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. And average flight time is 6:10
- agumonkey 7y agoAre we entering a future where plane routes are designed to follow storms ?
- pintxo 7y agoWe already do [1]: > They are aligned in such a way as to minimize any head winds and maximize tail winds impact on the aircraft. This results in much more efficiency by reducing fuel burn and flight time. To make such efficiencies possible, the routes are created twice daily to take account of the shifting of the winds aloft and the principal traffic flow, eastward in North America evening and westward twelve hours later. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Tracks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Tracks
- jrnichols 7y agoThe BA callsign isn't "Speedbird" for nothing. :)