Just flew From MIA to LHR on BA a 744. Can't believe the speed of this flight and wanted to get some expert views from you guys. According to the map on the IFE we were travelling at 720mph!!! Now I have flown tons of 747's 200's, 300's & 400's and have never got anywhere near this sort of speed. Thats something like mach 0.93ish. Would this be correct or is there some technical thing that makes this reading completely meaningless (pressures etc.) The flight director dude did mention that it was going to be a quick flight!!! Have any others experienced this sort of speed ??

For info, we departed Miami 17:15 local time and arrived London 0605 local time. Allowing for the 5 hour time difference this equates to a 7hr 50 min flight. Our flight out to Miami was more like 9.5 hrs ish (cant rememeber the exact times).

Incidentally, there was quite a tail wind and it got pretty bumpy... had bum left seat situation several times

Cheers for now, have a nice day!!

I've never flown at that speed (I don't think). 720mph is certainly faster than most flights I've been on which were assisted by the jet stream. I guess the winds were stronger on your flight.

Got to 715mph in a 767 over Jordan. There were some gasps round the cabin I can tell you.

Its all to do with the jet stream.
Last year London to Dallas 10 hours 12 minutes, Dallas to London 7 hours 25 minutes.
It also depends if your flight gets to the cross atlantic funnel on time, late flights get the routes with the less advantageous wind.

The speed you're quoting (from the Skymap screen) is Ground Speed. If you've got a 120mph tailwind, then you take the normal 600mph speed and your ground speed is 720mph - but you're only moving through the air at 600 mph, so stil at mach whatever that is (normal cruising speed).

If you were flying the other way, you'd be going at 480mph ground speed, only 2/3 as fast, so the journey would take 50% longer!!!

(Above figures are illustrative only, not sure they'd be as strong a wind in the real world?)

I've managed to do the DTW to LHR route on BA in less than 6 hours with a scheduled flight time of 7hrs20mins. It also involved 100mph+ tailwinds and severe turbulence that was so bad the dinner service took twice the usual time after being put away and restarted twice. Unfortunately we ended up holding over LHR until the airport opened at 6am.

Is it possible BA pilots sit in the strongest tailwinds to get best possible fuel saving? I've never experienced it on any other airline.

Coming back from YYZ recently, everyone was ushered onto the BA744 in quick time, we pushed back, started to taxi when the captain came on and said we were going to a remote holding point where we would sit for 1 hour.

Got to the holding point and then the F/O came and said BA ops in London had asked us to do this for 2 reasons. 1) to vacate the gate so the BA 777 arriving into YYZ could use it as YYZ had no spare gates and 2) the winds across the pond were so strong that our crossing was only to be 5 1/2 hours and we would arrive before the 6am curfew.

We then sat at this holding point for an hour, engines off, no IFE, nowt. Just sitting there seemed like the longest hour of my life.

No. All flights across the Atlantic are routed onto specific tracks that are drawn-up each day to (going eastbound) take advantage of tailwinds and (going westbound) to avoid the worst of the headwinds. Before every flight, the airlines' dispatcher will review that evening's NAT tracks and select the best one for each flight (least flight time and fuel usage) as well as the ideal altitude and speed and will file that in the flight plan. Once in flight, the pilots must contact the Oceanic Control Center for final clearance. There is no guarantee that a particular flight will get its desired routing as all aircraft want to operate in the same naorrow band of altitudes and on the most direct routing. It's up to the controllers to sort it out.

There are four Oceanic Control Centers covering the Atlantic. They essentially have divided it up into four quadrents, each with responsibility for one quadrent. The dividing lines are at 30 Degrees West Longitude and, I think, 42 or 45 Degrees North Latitude.

The four Oceanic Control Centers are:

1 - Gander Oceanic, Newfoundland Canada (controls the northeast quadrent)
2 - Shanwick Oceanic, a combination of Shannon Ireland and Prestwick, Scotland, with the radio operators in Shannon and the controlers in Prestwick (controls the northwest quadrent)
3 - New York Oceanic, Long Island (controls the southeast quadrent)
4 - Santa Maria Oceanic, Azores Islands, Portugal (controls the southwest quadrent)

A typical U.S./Canada to Europe flight will controlled by Gander and Shanwick. Flights from Europe to the Carribbean and South America are more likely to be controlled by New York and Santa Maria.

A few years ago, I was flying NW NRT-HNL. The 742 reached an airspeed of 1,200 km/h+ (750 mph) ground speed. NW seems to liek to use this route as a NRT-LAX flight I took early this year passed just north of Hawaii - very southerly and way off the great circle.


Well, I flew a NW DC-10 HNL-NRT. The a/c's ground speed crawled to sub 500 mph (as slow as 400 mph) about 2-3 hrs out of NRT. Not sure if this was due to very strong headwinds or ATC (no head/tail wind speed indicators). At any rate, even if the block time was padded, the flight left punctually and arrived 1/2 hr late.


They will certainly try to use it to fly a 3-engined 744 from LAX to LHR!

In my experience of having really quick flights to LHR all the time you save in the air you make up by having to sit on the ground waiting for your gate to become free.

Admittedly, that is a pretty fast flight time to LHR.