Some passengers aboard international flights arrived at their destinations earlier than expected over the weekend, but it took their planes traveling at 800 mph to do so.
Commercial flights typically travel between 480 to 575 mph speeds, according to Flex Air Flight School. Eddie Sheerr, a meteorologist with NTV News in Canada, said in a post on X that the planes reached higher speeds because they got a “good push from near 200 mph jet stream.”
Jet streams are “relatively narrow bands of strong wind in the upper levels of the atmosphere,” according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. Winds blow from west to east within jet streams, the agency said.
The planes endured peak winds of around 265 mph, the second “strongest upper-level wind recorded in local history going back to the mid-20th century,” the National Weather Service’s Baltimore-Washington office said Feb. 17 in a post on X.
“For those flying eastbound in this jet, there will be quite a tailwind,” the NWS office said in the X post.
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What flights traveled over 800 mph?
The affected flights included Virgin Atlantic Flight 22, which departed from Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) at 10:45 p.m. Saturday and landed in London 45 minutes early due to the aircraft at a point reaching a top speed of 802 mph, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.
United Airlines Flight 64 from Newark to Lisbon reached 838 mph and landed 20 minutes early with the assistance of…
