Similar experience on a NW DC-10 MSP-HNL. There was a long period of time where you'd check the time to arrival and then you'd check an hour later and it hadn't moved.

The most efficient way to deal with strong winds is to increase Mach number when flying into a headwind and to decrease Mach when flying with a tailwind.

Of course, there are limits to how fast, or how slow, you can practically go.

This thread is great! Thanks for the link to the records site. Aviation never ceases to amaze me

I forgot about another flight. YOW-LHR on a CP 763. Flight was held back at YOW for about 2 hours otherwise arrival would be way before arrival slot time. Can't remember the exact flight time but maybe 5 hours which would have implied an average speed of 660 mph on great circle distance.

I've seen over 700 mph on CX HKG-JFK several times. Those flights tend not to fly the great circle route, but rather south of Alaska entering the North American land mass close to Vancouver. JFK-HKG tends to be closer to the great circle, going polar and flying across Siberia and the PRC. Love that flight.

Mrs. Milepig and I once left NRT at almost the same time. She was flying NRT-ORD and I NRT-LAX before changing to an ORD flight. She caught the tail winds and when I called from LAX as soon as I landed she was already home in our living room.

JFK-LHR in 5hrs 16mins on a BA 772:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...cord-time.html

414kts in a Mooney sounds terrifying!
http://www.groundspeedrecords.com/in...yid=2016#12125

690-700 mph seems fairly common on winter, eastbound flights between SE Asia and Vancouver. HND-YVR in winter is barely longer than a North American transcon.

That's nothing, wait til the 16+ hour TPAC which has already been rerouted because of headwinds requires a fuel stop in Fiji!

750mph ground speed is the best I've experienced, on a 777 IAH to LHR flight with a 200mph tailwind from reaching cruising altitude to the east coast and well above 100mph for much of the crossing. A sub nine hour flight, but like a rollercoaster ride.

I see it regularly TPAC eastbound because there is almost always a tailwind.

Fastest I think I've seen is just over 700mph, HKG-DFW.

for every tail, there is a head wind. we once had to stop in iceland to gas up on a muc-iad flight. very cold, and lots of wind. we got dumped on the tarmac in the dark, and were told not to let go of the rope(ran from plane to airport)

bought lots of iclandic wool sweaters

came back recently from lhr to iAd. we dropped south of england, and did not take great circle route. head winds were under 10 knts.

While this is true, aircraft aren't on rails like trains. They don't have to follow fixed routes. They often deviate from a great circle route if better winds make up for the added distance, by either catching tailwinds or avoiding headwinds. Airline flight planning departments are very good at optimizing this sort of thing, so the number of flights that are significantly impacted by headwinds is less than the number that are significantly improved by tailwinds.

A few years ago, when I was flying between Washington and London every few months, it was always interesting to see the flightpath, especially for the westbounds back to the US. One particular time we flew almost due north from LHR, similar routing as to when I used to fly between London and LA regularly.

Flightaware shows you the actual distance flown for historical flights and so I looked up our flight and percentage wise it was a good double digits longer than the Great Circle route. One of the days around it the flight was over 5000 miles because of how far north the flight went! Compared to the usual 3677 straight line that's incredible. I think the flying time was about 9hrs 30mins or so...on LHR-IAD!