Fraser

Supersonic: 57,720 ft
Subsonic: 41,000ft

It was indeed ^ I have an inflight book, 'The Briefing' (I believe) from a 1996 flight that shows the profile of the flight with regard to time and altitiude.

http://www.imagestation.com/4592222/4183131212
http://www.imagestation.com/4592222/4183131203

slawecki

The window between stall and supersonic narrows as the altitude increases. there is some limit to this window. maybe 40 or 60 knots. varies for each plane type.

When the pilot states "we will cruse at ... for so far, then ... + 2000 ft for the second half of the flight" the plane has burned off enough weight (fuel and toilet flushes) to open that window.

meducate

I have a bit of dyslexia when trying to remember, but I think both of my Concorde flights hit 58,500 (unless it was 55,800). I recall thinking that I saw the curvature of the Earth, but then again the chamgagne flowing with the caviar might have blurre my vision...

It was the ULTIMATE flying experience, IMHO... ^

Efrem

The optimum flight path is what's called a "climbing cruise." Basically, as the aircraft loses weight, it needs less lift. It can obtain less lift in thinner air. By doing that, it gets the benefit of less drag and hence less fuel consumption.

As a practical matter, the need to move up in steps of 2000' for air traffic control reasons limits how closely a given flight can track the optimum path.

There's a whole bunch of reasons why today's airliners fly only up to the low 40,000s of feet. There's no point in fixing one without fixing them all, so only a totally new design such as the 787 could fly enough higher to notice. Plus, if to get much higher without going supersonic, you need more wing area for a given weight, which penalizes flights that don't go so high, which ... in short, it's not a simple design problem.

fs2k2isfun

Not true. military aircraft do have pressurization, but also supplemental oxygen via a face mask.

HkCaGu

I've noticed that "Airshow" that most airlines employ show standard flight levels times 100 feet when above 18,000 feet, but on Frontier's free "map" channel I'd see something like "40,298 ft", which sounds like it's a GPS reading.

So in the heat of summer, flying FL410 may actually mean you're really at 42,300 feet!

YVR Cockroach

What pilots refer to as coffin corner. I'd imagine if you go high enough, the stall and tp speed would converge?

tev9999

I was on a NW 757 MEM-DTW a few weeks ago that went up to 41,000. The pilot had announced we leveled off in the mid- 30s, but we were gettig a lot of chop. I felt another climb and the pilot came on a few minutes later and said we were going up to 41 to look for smooth air.

greenery

They said AIRFORCE ONE went up to 44,000 feet on September 11th. It is a Boeing 747.

sts603

Flown at 41K twice on short flights actually - PHL-MCO and even better, CLT-PHL (most of the flight was spent climbing or descending).

dhacker

57k, at least according to my photos:

http://www.pbase.com/davehacker/misc

Jayou360

And what did Hitch have to say for himself?

Steve Fenton

I flew from Manchester to Koln a few weeks ago, the pilot came on to talk to the passengers saying he hab been flying for more than 20 years and right now we were flying in a 737 at 42000 at 1172 kmh with a 320 kmh tail windand this was the fastest he had ever flown and the highest.

Punki

When we flew Concorde, they told us that they could hit 60,000 feet in the winter, but that in the summer they flew a little lower because of the heat.

We flew in July and, IIRC, reached only about 56,000 feet. We could just begin to see the curvature of the earth.

When we shared these photos with some pilots in the club at the Paddington Hilton, they became very excited. These particular pilots were private pilots for Coca Cola and had been parked at the Paddington Hilton while the Coke big wigs attended the British Open. Doesn't sound like too bad a gig to me.

Globaliser

Concorde was (like in so many other ways) an exception to this. Because of the lack of conflicting traffic at those altitudes, she usually got a block clearance - she could fly at any altitude in a sizeable chunk of flight levels, thus allowing her to drift up as she chose rather than having to do it in steps.

Checking back on my trip, it was 56,000 feet out and 55,000 feet back. I think we ate too much lunch on the return.The U2 had a very tight corner where it operated. IIRC, the stall speed was 2 knots less than VNE (the "never exceed" speed). It had to be flown very accurately.