A British Airways subsonic flight between New York and London has broken the speed record, helped by a jet stream accelerated by Storm Ciara.
The Boeing 747-436 flight, which finished its journey in 4 hours and 56 minutes, is now considered the fastest-ever subsonic transatlantic flight. Online flight tracking service Flightradar24 stated that the BA flight beat the previous record held by Norwegian since January 2018 for five hours 13 minutes flight.
The BA aircraft flew overnight from Saturday and reached speeds of 825 mph or 1,327 km/h with much stronger than usual jet stream. The plane arrived at Heathrow Airport almost 80 minutes ahead of schedule on Sunday morning.
Flightradar24 tweeted, “If we’re not mistaken, BA now retakes the fastest subsonic NY-London crossing from Norwegian.”
The average estimated time for a plane to fly between London and New York is six hours and 13 minutes.
The British Airways aircraft was one minute faster than a Virgin Airbus A350 flight, and three minutes faster than another Virgin plane, which landed later. All these flights beat Norwegian’s record.
Meanwhile, the BBC said it was not able to verify the record for lack of complete database of flight times, but quoted aviation consultant and former BA pilot Alastair Rosenschein as saying that the aeroplane reached at “phenomenal speed.”
A BA Concorde flight in 1996 from New York to London, which touched down in two hours 52 minutes and 59 seconds, is considered the fastest transatlantic crossing.
Storm Ciara, with heavy rain and strong winds, continues to hit the lives in the UK, Ireland and other parts of Northern Europe.
Meanwhile, another British Airways flight, reportedly from Abuja, Nigeria, had to abort its landing at Heathrow Airport even after touching down the runway due to strong winds.
Source: Read Full Article