Near-record breaking wind speeds have sent several passenger airplanes to supersonic speeds over the mid-Atlantic.
Passenger planes are no slouches in the speed stakes, but they don’t usually get near to the almost 800mph speed that one Virgin Atlantic flight travelling from Washington to London, England, reached – which is faster than the speed of sound.
The speeds were caused by the second-strongest upper-level wind in recorded history – going back some 70 years – according to a post on X (formerly Twitter) by the National Weather Service Baltimore/Washington.
The service reported that up at 34-35,000 feet, winds hit 230 knots, which is 265mph.
Another plane, travelling from Newark Airport in New Jersey to Lisbon in Portugal, clocked up speeds of 835mph.
However, although the planes were travelling faster than the speed of sound, they didn’t break the sound barrier as they were not going faster than sound relative to the air around them at the time.
Usually, wind speeds in what is known as the Atlantic Jetstream – a current of air flowing east to west around the world – are about 110mph, although they do vary, usually according to seasons, being faster in the winter.
The freakily fast wind speeds were caused by super-cold temperatures in the northeast and warmer air in the south. The weather phenomenon known as El Nino – a warming of sea surface temperature that occurs every few years, typically concentrated in the central-east equatorial Pacific – is also thought to have influenced it. Climate change may also have had an impact – with increasing temperatures thought to accelerate wind speeds in the Jetstream.
The high wind speeds meant that passengers on planes with a tailwind – going from the US to Europe – arrived at their destinations earlier, those going in the opposite direction will have experienced longer flight times, as well as the possibility of increased turbulence.
