Thousands of people who traveled over the weekend ended up getting to their destinations a lot earlier than planned – and they have Mother Nature to thank for it.
High-altitude winds over the mid-Atlantic helped push planes along on Saturday, resulting in at least two planes reaching record speeds of 800 miles per hour, industry officials say. “For those flying eastbound, there will be quite a tail wind,” the National Weather Service wrote Saturday on X.
While the speed of the planes set records, the wind itself fell just short of earning an entry in history books. Winds at cruising altitude on Saturday peaked at 265 miles per hour, per the NWS. That’s just two miles per hour slower than the record, which was set on December 6th, 2002, the NWS reports.
From NPR:
Sure enough, that tailwind helped cut down the flight time for passengers on a Virgin Atlantic flight from D.C. to London by 45 minutes, according to the tracker FlightAware.
The Boeing 787 reached a maximum ground speed of 802 mph, surpassing the speed of sound (767 mph). But, as The Washington Post explained, the plane didn’t actually break the sound barrier.
“Although its ground speed — a measure that combines the plane’s actual speed and the additional push from the wind — was greater than the speed of sound, it was still moving through the surrounding air at its ordinary cruise speed. It just so happened that the surrounding air was moving unusually fast,” the Post reported.
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