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Record-Breaking Jet Stream Accelerates Air Travel, Flight Clocks In At 801 MPH (cbsnews.com)
pgmrdlm quotes CBS News: On Monday night, the river of air 35,000 feet above the New York City area, known as the jet stream, clocked in at a blazing 231 mph. This is the fastest jet stream on record since 1957 for the National Weather Service in Upton, New York — breaking the old record of 223 mph, according to NWS forecaster Carlie Buccola. This wind provided a turbo boost to commercial passenger planes along for the ride. With the help of this rapid tailwind, Virgin Atlantic Flight 8 from Los Angeles to London hit what could be a record high speed for a Boeing 787: 801 mph over Pennsylvania at 9:20 p.m. Monday night...
"The typical cruising speed of the Dreamliner is 561 mph," CBS News transportation correspondent Kris Van Cleave points out. "The past record for the 787 is 776 mph set in January 2017 by a Norwegian 787-9 flying from JFK to London Gatwick. That flight set a record for the fastest subsonic transatlantic commercial airline flight -- 5 hours and 13 minutes, thanks to a 202 mph tailwind."
FlightAware, a global aviation data services company, reminds CBS that even a 100 mph increase in the jet stream can shorten a flight by an hour.
"The typical cruising speed of the Dreamliner is 561 mph," CBS News transportation correspondent Kris Van Cleave points out. "The past record for the 787 is 776 mph set in January 2017 by a Norwegian 787-9 flying from JFK to London Gatwick. That flight set a record for the fastest subsonic transatlantic commercial airline flight -- 5 hours and 13 minutes, thanks to a 202 mph tailwind."
FlightAware, a global aviation data services company, reminds CBS that even a 100 mph increase in the jet stream can shorten a flight by an hour.
Of course, that could mean flights going the other direction will be *delayed* by an hour or more - either because they’re heading into the strong stream or because of the extra distance routing around it.
I wonder if flights being an hour early creates headaches for air traffic control and gate management at the destination? It’s great for the passengers though.
#DeleteChrome
if creimer farts westward he can knock out hawai'i an hour faster than predicted?
This article didn't butcher it too badly. But still there's a layer of education opportunity that was missed.
It wouldn't take more than 2 sentences to include an explanation about ground speed versus air speed. Not even talking about the differences in airspeed at different altitudes and densities, mach, etc. But I guess even that is too much for our technical details-allergic media.
So much for the hypothesis that AGW would weaken the jet stream.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
... try again in metric.
That's significantly faster than the speed of sound! Sound travels at about 660 mph at a 787's cruising altitude. Of course, sound travels through the air, so the plane wasn't actually breaking the sound barrier, as the air speed was below that, so it wasn't really hitting Mach 1, but I suppose if the plane were to suddenly dive out of the jet stream into relatively still air, it would have done so; I wonder how well it would have handled the stress?
To put that in perspective: 801MPH is Mach 1.044. (The speed of sound is 767.27 mph).
Its relative speed to the ground would be faster than the speed of sound
I'm not in the New York area.
It must be teh global warmingz!!11!!
Well sure, but what about the reverse leg of the trip?
Last week, I tracked my wife on a flight from LAX->IAD on a 737-900 at ~715mph. Yes, mph is what Flightaware showed...not knots. The "planned" speed was somewhere in the mid-500s. Her flight had taken off nearly half an hour late, and arrived well ahead of schedule.
As a former (stopped years ago) Cessna pilot, I once flew from Korea to Japan. Normal airspeed in the 172 is around 110 knots, and with a 70 knot smooth tailwind, we arrived over an hour ahead of plan.
Just another day in Paradise
I and the world have no idea how fast or how high up that is. Scientist should be using the Metric system like everyone else which makes it easier to understand and do calculations with.
http://saveie6.com/
Wait, didn't I see this somewhere before?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
In aviation -- almost everywhere -- feet is used for elevation, miles are used for distance, and knots are used for speed.
the river of air 35,000 feet above the New York City area, known as the jet stream
That's a way to describe a planet-circling phenomenon, if you are one of those morons whose map of the world has written "here be dragons" on everything outside the USA.
It's not a way to talk to an educated audience like /.ers who know, many from first-hand experience, that places outside the three locations Hollywood places movies in actually do exist.
Especially in a story that doesn't make sense unless you understand the actual reach of the jet stream.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Sorry, but heavier than air aviation, computers, and tons of other stuff were invented in the US by people using the American version of Imperial Units. The only nation to put a man on the moon (USA) is non-metric. The nation with the record of successfully landing probes on Mars (USA) is non-metric. The American probe that missed Mars used (partly) metric.
What's the magic of Metric? It's decimal, so some of the math is easier for simpletons who do not have a handy calculator? It's basic unit of length is based on an arbitrary division of the Earth's circumference (and a faulty calc at that) and so it's supposedly superior?
We have computers now to handle math, so the idea that a system must be based on 10 to allow dummies an easier life is obsolete; math can be done in any base and translated between bases. As a related matter, measurements can be made in any system and a compuer can instantly translate, so the primary consideration in choice of measurement systems now should be usefulness and convenience, and that's where imperial units win every time.
Metric is just plain annoying. The basic units are basically dumb and not handy in daily use; an inch, a foot, and a mile are handy sizes.
Centimeter and Millimeter? Too small for most applications unless you like lots of extra decimal digits you would not need if you had common sense ;-)
Meter? Too big for many things that a Centimeter is too small for; it's a slightly-wrong yard which itself is a handy way of saying "three feet" and not used as often as a foot.
Celsius? Too coarse, unless of course you're into extra digits after a decimal point that you would not need if you used Farenheit.
And while I'm on the subject.... If you are simple minded enough to need everything to be divisible by ten, then why no metric clocks? Surely you could invent a 10 hour day or a hundred hour day (a Milliday?) and then a one hundred minute hour (a millihour?) and perhaps a metric calendar with either 10 or 100 months?
Sure, it's handy to have a measurement system based on 10 since we all used base10 math in our non computer programming lives, but metric blows it by sizing the physical units stupidly, and by not making a metric clock the proponents essentially admit that people are perfectly able to use non-decimal measurement systems and that some things just do not easily and conveniently divide by 10.
-FlightAware, a global aviation data services company, reminds CBS that even a 100 mph increase in the jet stream can shorten a flight by an hour.-
Lets take this apart. /. submitters sometimes seem to be in short supply. It is kind of amazing how much the connotative meaning changed in that small excerpt.
FilghtAware 'reminds' CBS. This denotatively means that CBS previously knew this. Can you even remind corporate knowledge?
'even a 100 mph increase in the jet stream' really downplays the significance of what sounds to me to be a pretty significant number. In the article they say it hit a max recorded speed of 231 mph, how can 44% of the highest speed ever recorded rate an 'even'? That is like saying "driving 'just' 20 miles an hour faster can cut out an hour from your trip" Even on an interstate 20 miles an hour faster than normal is pretty significant, especially to the guy with flashy lights on his car.
'can shorten a flight by an hour' Oh really? How about taking an hour out of my Pittsburgh to Newark flight?
This last sentence just jumped out me as so useless that I actually looked at TFA. I found to my immense relief that the original was actually informative:
-"A 100 mph increase in the jet stream above typical can add or remove about an hour from a five to six hour flight," according to a spokesperson from FlightAware, a global aviation software and data services company based in Houston.-
Apparently journalism isn't quite dead, but critical reading skills among
"Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI