New record ! On Sunday, a plane from New York to London made the crossing in 4.56 hours, while it takes on average just over 6 hours to complete this trip.
The aircraft, a British Airways Boeing 747–400, landed at 11:21 pm Saturday evening in the British capital, or 12:21 am for France.
As Météo Villes explains, this performance is a consequence of the jet stream, a very rapid air current located several kilometers above the Earth’s surface, responsible for storm Ciara. This weekend, the jet stream was blowing at nearly 400 km / h at 9,000 m altitude.
4:56 to cover the New-York -> London route, compared to more than 6 hours 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
Such a force of wind at altitude allows planes to reach 1,200 km / h, specifies Keraunos, the observatory of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms. But in the sense of a crossing from Europe to America, these winds considerably slow down the planes.
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
As indicated by Le Parisien, two other planes, Airbus A350s, were not far from this record since they took 4 h 57 and 4 h 59 to make this same crossing on Saturday.
However, the real record dates back to 1996, with a flight in 2 hours 52 minutes by a Concorde supersonic aircraft. But since this category of aircraft has been withdrawn from service, it is impossible for conventional aircraft to beat it.
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