Not one, not two, but three commercial planes exceeded the speed of sound this weekend, or 1,224 km/h. The aircraft were pushed by exceptionally powerful winds over the Atlantic.
Saturday evening and Sunday, winds reaching 425 km/h at an altitude of more than 10,000 meters swept across the center of the Atlantic, allowing several airliners to reach and exceed a speed of 1,250 km /h, quite significantly higher than that of sound. However, it is not scientifically possible to say that the devices have broken the sound barrier. And you will see, the explanation is very simple. Return to this extremely rare fact.
Thanks to the wind, planes arrive well ahead of schedule
The National Weather Service, the equivalent of Météo France among our American neighbors, got excited on Saturday evening by recording, via a weather balloon, the second highest wind speed in History, since the beginning of the measurements started in the 1950s. The atmospheric conditions above the Atlantic were exceptional and logically led to faster flights for planes flying in the direction from America to Europe, therefore towards the east.
Let’s start with Virgin Atlantic flight 22, connecting Washington to London. While taking off on Sunday at 10:45 p.m. local time (11:00 p.m. scheduled time) and scheduled to land in Portugal at 11:10 a.m. GMT, the American carrier’s Boeing 787-9 landed at 10:18 a.m., a total of 47 minutes early.
The tailwind literally carried the aircraft, which traveled up to 1,249 km/h at maximum speed, measured as it completed its ascending phase at an altitude of 11,887 meters, east of Long Island. It then stabilized its speed between 965 and 1,125 km/h, beyond its theoretical maximum speed (945 km/h).
The devices nevertheless did not break the sound barrier, even though they had the speed to do so.
United Airlines Flight 64, a Boeing 787-10 also flying from Newark to New York, landed more than 20 minutes early Sunday morning, after reaching a ground speed of 1,349 km/h, data shows from FlightAware, which we were able to consult.
American Airlines Flight 120, arriving in Doha, Qatar after taking off from Philadelphia, managed to reach a fairly incredible speed of 1,352 km/h. In the end, the Boeing 787-9 passengers arrived at their destination more than 34 minutes early.
So if the maximum speed of each of the three flights well exceeded that of sound (1,224 km/h), the planes did not break the sound barrier. Because the ground speed, which combines the real speed of the plane and the wind thrust, was higher than normal precisely because of the favorable winds, moreover caused by a contrast between the very cold air from the northeast and the gentle air of the southeast. There was therefore no famous shock wave, the supersonic boom specific to crossing the sound barrier.
Sources: FlightAware, Washington Post
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