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Storm Ciara Helps Plane Beat Transatlantic Flight Record (bbc.com) 84

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Experts are hailing a British Airways flight as the fastest subsonic New York to London journey. From a report: The Boeing 747-436 reached speeds of 825 mph (1,327 km/h) as it rode a jet stream accelerated by Storm Ciara. 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. The BBC has been unable to independently verify the record as no complete database of flight times was available. Aviation consultant and former BA pilot Alastair Rosenschein said the aeroplane reached a "phenomenal speed." "The pilot will have sat their aircraft in the core of the jet stream and at this time of year it's quite strong. Turbulence in those jet streams can be quite severe, but you can also find it can be a very smooth journey."
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Storm Ciara Helps Plane Beat Transatlantic Flight Record More

Storm Ciara Helps Plane Beat Transatlantic Flight Record

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  • Not only that (Score:4, Funny)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @01:25PM (#59716048)

    In Germany it made 43.7 gigawatts of wind power.

    Enough for 36 time-jumps with Doc Brown's time-machine.

    https://www.cleanenergywire.or... [cleanenergywire.org]

  • And his slot? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @01:27PM (#59716056) Journal

    Nothing like an 80 minute wait on the tarmac while you wait for your assigned gate to open up...

    • I flew from San Diego to Chicago, and a storm system gave us a big tail wind. Amazing view of thunderheads as we flew around them. Arrived at O'Hare 45 minutes early, and had to sit in the hot summer sun until our gate opened.

      • Re:And his slot? (Score:4, Informative)

        by aitikin ( 909209 ) on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @02:28PM (#59716328)

        Arrived at O'Hare 45 minutes early, and had to sit in the hot summer sun until our gate opened.

        I thought that was just the result of landing at O'Hare?

      • It's a pity these jets can't let the airport know they're coming in early. Someone should invent a way to send sound waves long distances through the air. If they used some sort of radiation, they might even be able to do it at the speed of light... imagine! I propose that we honour the radiation by calling the technology "radia" or something similar.

    • You ever wonder why you need to check your gate when you arrive at the airport? It's because of stuff like this. They'll simply be directed to a different gate that's available. Worst case, yes, they need to wait on the tarmac for their original gate, and we all know stories of people who've had that happen, but on a typical day most major airports are able to accommodate early arrivals without much delay.

      • Adding to that, not all gates are created equal and many are not designed to handle the wide body jumbos like a 747. You might break the record but if Heathrow only has so many gates for the 747 class of plane, you will be waiting for your gate. And on top of that it's an international flight so you are further constrained to gates at terminals with the required infrastructure to handle international departures and arrivals. Worst for me was flying a Piper Archer a few years back with a headwind that

        • Its not just a case of whether the airport has a free gate available that can take the 747, but its also whether the available gate is allowed to be used by your airline - many airports have ranges of gates which are owned by an airline that is based out of there, and those gates are only available to other airlines in emergency situations.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ksevio ( 865461 )

      According to my coworker, his flight was delayed leaving because they didn't want to arrive before the airport opened

      • Wouldn't surprise me, many airports are under a noise curfew and will receive fines for arrivals before a certain time. Heathrow is one of those which essentially shuts down overnight.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jrumney ( 197329 )

          Heathrow does fine airlines for arriving too early, but since the Concorde stopped flying, there is only the occasional Tupolev causing noise issues on descent unless you are within earshot of the runway. Noise is more an issue for takeoff, which they can more easily control the timing of.

          • Heathrow tightly monitors the noise of aircraft at all times, and arrivals can be fairly noisy surprisingly:

            Under the QC system, each aircraft type, including different versions of the same model, is assigned a QC according to its noise performance, separately for arrival and departure, as determined by the ICAO noise certification process. For example, a Boeing 737- 800 is classified as QC/0.5 on arrival and as QC/0.5 or QC/1 on departure (depending on its maximum certificated take-off weight), whereas a m

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jeremyp ( 130771 )

      I understand they actually waited on the tarmac for only an hour.

  • What the hell is "Storm Ciara"? Is it a hurricane? What recognized weather agency is naming ordinary storms? I thought it was the clowns that took over the Weather Channel doing that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by amalek ( 615708 )
      No, it's a storm. It was named by the Irish Met Office.

      • I remember when the world was run by sober, mature, adults, not children, marketers and people concerned with "branding".

            Oy vey!

        • Any security researcher that brands a vulnerability should be required to use Windows 3.1 and have his security credentials (CISSP, etc) suspended. The stupid, needless, narcissistic," look at me I'm a wanna be top flight security researcher" crap needs to stop.
        • Actually naming storms can help with human actions to prepare and protect themselves. We have good data on this.

    • In Europe the storm is called Sabine.
      Just go to windy.com or windfinder.com
      The storm is even bigger than the great storm (no one talked about) in December 2016/January 2017.

      It is a strange feeling to have a megastorm going over you with nearly no rain, +15C and more and during daytime a clear sky and sun. Temperatures around this time of the year used to be around -10C ...

      • And in July you had record low temperatures, nearly freezing [electroverse.net].

        • No idea.
          At that time I was in south Germany, in Nuernberg.

          It certainly did not make news here in Germany. Sounds like fake news to me. Nearly freezing would be close to impossible and most certainly newsworthy.

          Anyway: what is your point? We had freezing in July, and what has that to do with two megastorms currently on the planet? One in the north atlantic and one in the north pacific?

          • Not fake news [thelocal.de]. But not a surprise it wasn't well publicized because it goes against the established dogma of Earth Warming Fast to Kill us All.

            • My question was: what has that to do with the storms at the moment?

              Perhaps it made ordinary news, and I simply did not notice, weather is nothing I'm particularily interested in.I'm not aware about any dogma ... but I'm not religious either. BTW: Dogma - the movie - is very good ...

              • Dunno, what did your statement about a warm storm blowing through do with your comment about how it is supposed to be cold right now? Just like it was cold when it was supposed to be hot? Maybe - weather happens?
    • One reason why I stopped watching the Weather Channel. NWS is the one that names storms not some headline grabbing psuedo-weather network. Now get off my lawn......
  • Because I don't trust what I thought, I did some looking to see what mph breaks the sound barrier.

    767 mph The term sound barrier is still sometimes used today to refer to aircraft reaching supersonic flight. In dry air at 20 ÂC (68 ÂF), the speed of sound is 343 metres per second (about 767 mph, 1234 km/h or 1,125 ft/s).

    So, did they break the sound barrier in a passenger jet?

    • Re:Did they break the sound barrier? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Brett Buck ( 811747 ) on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @01:43PM (#59716144)

      No, they were running in a jet stream, so the relative wind increased their groundspeed, but the airspeed remained completely nominal. It's not even all that unusual, if you happen to route your flight across the Pacific and the wind is fortunate you can add 150 knots, eastbound.

      The Japanese fire balloons launched against the US/North American mainland were released from northeastern Japan and made it all the way across the Pacific is 3-4 days, using the same effect.

    • It is relative.
      Relative to the jet stream no, to a fixed observer yes, however I doubt it created a sonic boom condition.

      The speed of light is constant, the speed of sound isn't. It is like if I threw a baseball on an air flight, and claimed i threw a ball faster then anyone else, is misleading.

    • Re:Did they break the sound barrier? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Guybrush_T ( 980074 ) on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @01:49PM (#59716172)

      Welcome to relativity. Speeds are not absolute, they're relative to something else. If the air itself is moving at 400 km/h then flying at 700km/h means you are traveling at 1300 km/h relative to the ground.

      They "broke the speed of sound" relatively to the ground, but there was no bang because they didn't break the speed of sound relative to the surrounding air.

    • Yes and no.
      Yes, groundspeed was above 'sound barrier'.
      No, speed through the air was far below it ... No boom for you :D

    • The speed is not true air speed but ground speed. A tailwind increases groundspeed while airspeed is constant, resulting in faster transit times.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by pz ( 113803 )

      So, did they break the sound barrier in a passenger jet?

      As others have explained, while they did not exceed the speed of sound because they were flying through moving air, and thus the two velocity vectors add to create a groundspeed apparently faster than sound, had they in fact exceeded the speed of sound, it would not have been the first time a passenger jet had done so.

      Huh?

      Concorde, flown by British Airways and Air France, was a supersonic passenger jet that routinely cruised at Mach 2.0 (or slightly above). It served the trans-atlantic market for just shy

    • The real speed that matters is knots. At sea level 666 kts is the magic number for the speed of sound. Between 9-12Km (30-40K ft) it's 589-573 kts.

      And as others have already explained, no, it didn't exceed those speeds.
  • Isn't that FTS?

    • Isn't that FTS?

      Relative to the ground, yes, but not relative to the air it was flying in (the jet stream), which was moving in the same direction as the plane at 260mph.

  • Phenomenal speed? (Score:5, Funny)

    by eriks ( 31863 ) on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @02:01PM (#59716224)

    Hmm, only "phenomenal speed" -- I bet they were trying for Ludicrous Speed!

  • Why not fly slower and save fuel? (Score:3)

    by jb_nizet ( 98713 ) on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @02:14PM (#59716270)

    Naïve question: why didn't they choose to fly slower instead, and save fuel?

    Is it impossible to do so? Or not cost-effective?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kevinbr ( 689680 )

      The window of stalling at high altitude is very small.

      "The region is deadly. Get too slow, and you'll stall the jet at high altitude (not something you want to do). Get too fast, and you'll exceed your critical mach number. The air over your wings will go supersonic, you'll pitch down, the aircraft will accelerate, and your wings will fall off. Also bad"

      Google "coffin corner"

      • The window of stalling at high altitude is very small.

        And if anyone wants to know what the consequences of stalling at high altitude can be, look no further than the crash of Air France 447. [wikipedia.org]

    • Re:Why not fly slower and save fuel? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @02:23PM (#59716302)

      Naïve question: why didn't they choose to fly slower instead, and save fuel?

      Is it impossible to do so? Or not cost-effective?

      The ground speed has nothing to do with fuel consumption, it is simply TAS plus tailwind in this case; so they could be flying at the most economical airspeed yet have a high groundspeed due to the tailwind.

      • The questions could be re-phrased, "how does it work out that the most economical airspeed is just below the speed of sound?" With cars for example it is 55 mph or so, and rises dramatically even by 100 mph, given air resistance rises with the square of speed, so clearly something else is going on with airplanes.

        • The concept is identical for cars and planes. You're trading off engine's efficiency for drag.

          The thing is with cars the engine efficiency is decoupled from speed through the gearbox and a piston engine is most at ... well it varies between diesel and gasoline, but the point is higher != better, it's somewhere in the middle of the operating range. This together results in a peak efficiency somewhere at the 45-55mph range.

          For an aircraft peak thrust efficiency from a turbofan is actually at full throttle lar

          • The concept is identical for cars and planes. You're trading off engine's efficiency for drag.

            The thing is with cars the engine efficiency is decoupled from speed through the gearbox and a piston engine is most at ... well it varies between diesel and gasoline, but the point is higher != better, it's somewhere in the middle of the operating range. This together results in a peak efficiency somewhere at the 45-55mph range.

            For an aircraft peak thrust efficiency from a turbofan is actually at full throttle lar

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by ATPtechie ( 6601442 )
        Slowing down from top speed does, indeed, save fuel in jets when in no-wind or a tail-wind situations. The squared-function you mention (energy to overcome drag vs speed) is most true toward the higher end of the speed range (at the low end, a different kind of drag begins to dominate and it increases as you slow down -- allowing for the nose to rise without climbing while the aircraft slows down for landing for example). But (with no wind or a tail wind) at cruise air speeds -- slower saves fuel. This i

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      Naïve question: why didn't they choose to fly slower instead, and save fuel?

      Is it impossible to do so? Or not cost-effective?

      In this particular example I don't believe cost was a concern: they were trying to complete the flight before a major storm hit and the airport was closed. If the airport had closed before they landed they would have had to divert to an alternate airport, potentially incurring costs such as food/lodging for passengers, possible vouchers/refunds for passengers (I'm not up to speed on UK/EU laws regarding compensation to delayed passengers), and of course they now have an aircraft/crew out of position that h

    • Naïve question: why didn't they choose to fly slower instead, and save fuel?

      Is it impossible to do so? Or not cost-effective?

      We adjust the airspeed to account for winds all the time. Yes, in a strong tailwind, the flight will be planned with a slower airspeed to let the wind help you along, and it does save a lot of gas.

      However, pilots are humans, and we like breaking records just like the next guy. I imagine the conversation between dispatch and the crew that day when they showed up for the flight went something like:

      Dispatch: "Hey, Captain, we've run the numbers, and you have one hell of a jet stream on the Charlie track tonigh

  • The aircraft arrived 80 minutes early. That's 80 fewer minutes of fuel usage. If all else is equal that's a huge cost saving.

    • Did they have to dump fuel then to land? AIUI they usually plan to land nearly empty of fuel.

      And obviously if they had to dump it then there wasn't much savings after all.
      • Because I'm pretty sure I would not want to fly on a trans-Atlantic flight that took on less fuel because they were relying on the jet stream to get them there faster.

        ETOPS: engine turns or passengers swim.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        They don't land anywhere close to empty, that would be extremely dangerous if there were delays which required them to circle around waiting to land, or divert to another airport.

      • Highly unlikely. It is "just" 10 tons of fuel. And no, the planes don't necessarily land empty, it depends on fuel prices and the projected amount of time on the ground. You can google "fuel tankering".

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Did they have to dump fuel then to land? AIUI they usually plan to land nearly empty of fuel.

        And obviously if they had to dump it then there wasn't much savings after all.

        No. Fuel dumping is an operation reserved for very few occasions, because it costs money in wasted fuel, harms the environment and has to be done in carefully controlled conditions or you end up with what happened in LA with fuel dumped on schoolchildren.

        The reason to fuel dump is also limited to only a few aircraft. The reason is these ai

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jeremyp ( 130771 )

        God no.

        They never plan to land "almost empty". Imagine if they had planned to land almost empty and when they got to Heathrow, it was closed and they had to go on somewhere else (a real possibility on Sunday), or they had tried to land but had to do a go around because of an unstable approach (happened several times at Heathrow on Sunday), or when they got there, Heathrow was busy and they had to hold for half an hour (not so much a possibility as inevitable at Heathrow).

    • Assuming you have an equal number of flights going West as there are going East, higher winds actually cost you fuel.
      • If the flight distance is 1200 miles and the plane flies 500 mph, then its flight time is 2.4 hours. It burns 2.4 hours of fuel.
      • If there''s a 100 mph wind to the East, then eastbound planes get a 100 mph tailwind, and fly at the equivalent of 600 mph. Their light time is now 2 hours.
      • But planes flying west are now flying into a 100 mph headwind. They're flying at the equivalent of 400 mp

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jeremyp ( 130771 )

        On transatlantic flights they actually take an entirely different route. Westbound flights more or less take the great circle route but Eastbound flights go further South even though it is further so they can catch the jet stream.

        • Same for Sydney / SFO, which is nowhere near the jet stream. They make S shaped paths in opposite directions, starting more easterly going east, and more southerly going west.

          The wind in the upper atmosphere is always from the west near the poles. And not much at all at the equator. So they avoid the equator going east, and hug the equator going west. Flight time is 11 hours East to West vs 13 West to East.

  • But (Score:2)

    by rossdee ( 243626 )

    They still didn't beat records set by Concord.

    • I guess this is the fastest flight by a "modern" aircraft, if you consider a 30 year old design to be "modern" .No fair comparing with a 50 year old plane -that would be like comparing a Falcon-heavy to a Saturn V.

      We can't expect to duplicate the achievements of the ancients, and should remain happy that technology is not regressing too quickly.

      Somewhere maybe there is a parallel universe where we didn't give up on being awesome.

    • set by Concord

      Didn't know an hotel can fly that fast

  • I've transited the Andes from Chile to B.A. at 825 mph and it was uber loud outside. Once over the Andes...silence!

  • it arrived at Jurassic Park (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Odyssey_of_Flight_33).

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