A British Airways flight took four hours and 56 minutes to fly from New York to London on the night from Saturday to Sunday. That’s a record. Thanks to storm Ciara, who gave the device a strong boost.
The British Airways Boeing 747 reached a top speed of 1,287 kilometers per hour. The plane landed at Heathrow at 4:43 a.m., two hours ahead of schedule. It usually takes planes more than six hours to fly from New York to London. To be clear, it was the fastest ‘subsonic’ flight ever – the plane did not go through the sound barrier.
At the same time as the British Airways aircraft, planes flew from New York to London. Two Virgin airliners were up to half an hour slower than the ‘winning’ flight. They were all faster than the previous record holder, a Norwegian aircraft, which took five hours and 13 minutes to fly from New York to the British capital in January 2018.
Fast in Schiphol
In the Netherlands too, passengers were on the ground floor too early. The KLM flight from New York to Amsterdam landed at Schiphol nearly one and a half hours ahead of schedule on Sunday morning. The aircraft reached speeds of over 1,300 kilometers per hour. While the aircraft normally reaches a maximum of only 900 to 1,000 kilometers per hour.
KLM flight 644 took off in New York on Saturday evening at 9.31 pm (local time). The aircraft landed at Schiphol at 9.22 am on Sunday morning. Instead of 7 hours, the flight now only lasted 5.5 hours. “It was indeed a very fast flight,” said the airline’s spokesman. ‘Winning an hour and a half over such a distance is quite special.’
Click here for all updates about the storm.
Not every flight can take advantage of storm Ciara. A plane flying from Krakow to London was diverted to Birmingham. Also there the conditions were not optimal and it was a very choppy landing. Check out the footage in the video below.
– .
