It flies fast, very fast! The exceptional Jet Stream which brings us this Sunday storm Ciara is not only unhappy: an airliner has thus broken a record on the New York (United States) -London (United Kingdom) route.
The aircraft in question is a British Airways 747-400 Boeing aircraft. It took 4:56 hours to connect the two cities against about 6 hours in normal times, according to the statements of Flightradar, which lists aircraft journeys in real time. It arrived at 11:21 p.m. Saturday evening, 12:31 a.m. Sunday, Paris time.
As explained Weather cities, it is the high altitude winds, called jet current, that allow such a record to be established. They are currently very important and are also the cause of the power of Storm Ciara. The wind speed is around 400 km / h at an altitude of 9 km.
4h56 to cover the New-York -> London route, compared to more than 6h in normal times …
A speed record between these two cities, the consequence of the particularly vigorous Jet Stream this weekend (nearly 400km / h at 9000m altitude), and responsible for the #stormCiara. https://t.co/sW8vX0EpNp– Cities Weather (@Meteovilles) February 9, 2020
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Keraunos, the observatory of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms, stressed as early as Friday that such a force of wind at altitude allows planes to reach 1200 km / h. Conversely, in the direction of Europe towards America they are considerably slowed down, and therefore delayed, since they only reach 600 km / h. An airliner flies on average at around 900 km / h. The heart of the jet on the Atlantic reaches more than 370 km / h. It will expand to Europe over the weekend. The ground speeds of transatlantic flights are affected with this evening more than 1200 km / h in the west / east direction and barely 600 km / h in the east / west direction. #TempeteCiara pic.twitter.com/jUkp07dowN – Keraunos (@KeraunosObs) February 7, 2020 —
Two other planes, Airbus A350s, took less than 5 hours on Saturday, but they were a little slower at 4:57 and 4:59. The real record remains however held by a Concorde, in 1996, with 2h52. This category of supersonic aircraft was withdrawn from circulation in 2003 making its record inaccessible for conventional aircraft.
Newsletter Morning essentials A tour of the news to start the day — In 2018, also in January, a plane had made the same route in 5:13, as explained by Le Parisien, beating the previous record of five minutes. With 17 minutes gained this weekend, the record is crushed this time. –
