Commercial Aviation loves wind. We love the wind because it gives us extra ooomph for free. Fly with it and you get the results that are over the news today:
"Experts are hailing a British Airways flight as the fastest subsonic New York to London journey. The Boeing 747-436 reached speeds of 825 mph (1,327 km/h) as it rode a jet stream accelerated by Storm Ciara.
The four hours and 56 minutes flight arrived at Heathrow Airport 80 minutes ahead of schedule on Sunday morning. According to Flightradar24, an online flight tracking service, it beat a previous five hours 13 minutes record held by Norwegian..."
If you have a fear of flying will have these sort of questions:
Q. How is this possible?
Q. Is it safe?
It is possible because there are thick 'rivers of air' that are pulled around the planet. It is clever stuff and too long to explain for this blog. Suffice as to say, they are up there and flight planners know about them. We actually plan our routes across the planet to get in these jet streams - that is how your flight times can vary going the same route.
Yes, it is safe. The jet streams, as they have been nicknamed, are just moving air. The 'turbulent' bit potentially can be when we cross from normal moving air into faster moving air. Some of our pilot speakers describe it like two rivers or streams of water that are moving at different speeds, joining into one river. This causes a bit of disturbed water and that we call turbulence.
As you know from previous blogs, turbulence is not dangerous to you as long as you have your seat belt on. Also, the aircraft are so much stronger than they need to be so flying faster due to 'free thrust' from a jet stream is perfectly safe.
Link here for the BBC news article and here for CNN article
If you like the article, please feel free to share.
Take care,
Lovefly® Team
No comments:
Post a Comment