Boeing 787 Dreamliner Hits 801 MPH Over Pennsylvania

Who needs the Concorde, anyway? On Monday, somewhere over northern Pennsylvania, a Virgin Atlantic-flown Boeing 787 Dreamliner traveling from Los Angeles to London managed to go where few commercial planes have gone before: to a speed of 801 miles per hour.

Virgin Atlantic Boeing 787 Dreamliner Hits 801 MPH Over Pennsylvania, Thanks to Jet Stream

This was the ground speed of course. The plane was not in any danger of breaking apart, because the airspeed was only about 560 miles per hour. They were still covering a lot of ground fast.

200+ mph jet stream tailwind?

a reply to: ausername

Yep, that is one heck of a tail wind!

New York clocked the jet stream yesterday at a record 231 miles per hour.

Yep...300 knots even.......

Harvard scientists art manipulating right now.....Feb 2019.......trying for colder up north.....smart of them.....not hege

a reply to: GBP/JPY

Are you saying Harvard scientists are manipulating the jet stream or hedging their bets on art?

a reply to: ausername

We had a Gulfstream come out of Korea and pick up a 155 knot wind. Passed over their fuel stop and exceeded their technical maximum range.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Some of my questions will probably sound idiotic but I don't care. I know next to nothing about this subject.

Why did this speed happen? Did the pilots TRY for a high speed? I get this image of a couple of asshole teenagers trying to see how high they can get the speedometer on the higjway. Were they bored? And had the jet stream tailwind thing and thought, why not, let's see how fast we can do in this thing?

Or is it some thing that can't be controlled if you're in the jet stream or under it or whatever or have a tailwind or whatever?

Could the passengers feel that it was faster than usual?

Makes me nervous to imagine this.

I was on one of the early Airbus A320's on a ride from DEN to DTW one night and we had about a 180mph+ tailwind. The auto-throttles were surging and it felt like being on a big surfboard. About every 15-20 seconds the tail would come up, and the throttles would come back, and then the tail would drop and the throttles would spool back up again. Several people started getting nervous thinking something was wrong with the plane, until the PIC came on the intercom and explained what was going on. We tried several different altitudes but it was the same. This went on for most of the flight until we started our final descent.

It was like being on a drifting boat near shore when the tide is coming in. We were surfing.

I don't know what our ground speed was, but we were movin' pretty good; arrived on the ground in about 2:10 which is about 20 minutes early.

a reply to: KansasGirl

The speed they're talking about is speed over the ground. That's not the same as airspeed. Airspeed is the speed the aircraft is flying at. Ground speed is the speed the aircraft seems to be flying at over the ground(that's actually an over simplified explanation but it works).

Ground speed is fun, because it's affected by wind. A tail wind, such as in this case, makes the aircraft appear to be going faster than it really is. The speed that they registered, in ground speed, is in excess of Mach 1, and would have the plane supersonic. Their actual speed however was roughly 230 mph slower (ground speed minus wind speed). A small plane can actually see a negative ground speed, even though it's flying at 60-70 knots or more, if the wind is strong enough.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: ausername

We had a Gulfstream come out of Korea and pick up a 155 knot wind. Passed over their fuel stop and exceeded their technical maximum range.

That doesn't sound very safe. Did they only have a short bit to go? Running out of fuel is bad even with the boost.:

a reply to: Zaphod58

I’ve seen sign planes on south beach hovering overhead not moving on a windy day.

Moving backwards at times. Lol

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Jets headed west that day had a ground speed of only 300mph (or so)?

They would all arrive late, and maybe need to refuel en-route.

a reply to: pavil

They had plenty left when they landed. If it had been even remotely close to questionable they would have landed and refueled to be sure.

a reply to: carewemust

Our C-135s could go from Hawaii to the East Coast without refueling, but couldn't make the return trip without stopping for fuel.

Doesn't Japan have the highest Jet streams ??

Boeing is secretly responsible for climate change in order to generate more extreme jet streams, enabling them to more effectively market the 787 by boasting about its impressive speed.

Where's Al Gore when we need him?

originally posted by: Zaphod58

We had a Gulfstream come out of Korea and pick up a 155 knot wind. Passed over their fuel stop and exceeded their technical maximum range.

I have seen massive winds out of Korea at around 200 kts.

originally posted by: KansasGirl
a reply to: LookingAtMars

Some of my questions will probably sound idiotic but I don't care. I know next to nothing about this subject.

Why did this speed happen? Did the pilots TRY for a high speed? I get this image of a couple of asshole teenagers trying to see how high they can get the speedometer on the higjway. Were they bored? And had the jet stream tailwind thing and thought, why not, let's see how fast we can do in this thing?

Or is it some thing that can't be controlled if you're in the jet stream or under it or whatever or have a tailwind or whatever?

Could the passengers feel that it was faster than usual?

Makes me nervous to imagine this.

Think of it like being on a boat like a paddle wheel boat. It can do maybe 10kts in calm water but if they are going downstream they still can only do 10kts but if the river current is also going 10kts they will appear to people on the bank as going 20kts.

Its the contrails man..They are seeding the atmosphere to create uber fast jet streams to make airliners fly faster.

Sorry but it doesn't work that way. Winds hurt the average speed of aircraft. Think of a flight leaving New York, going to LA and then returning to NYC. It is slightly less than 2500 miles each way. Your aircraft cruises at 500 mph. With no wind, the round trip takes 10 hours. Now put in a 200 mph west to east wind. The first leg now takes 8 hours and 20 minutes. The return leg only takes 3 hours and thirty five minutes. Instead of 10 hours, the total trip takes almost 12hours. The wind costs 2 hours of extra time, which makes sense since you're in the headwind for longer than in the tailwind. In the aircraft I normally fly, the extra 2 hours means over 7,000 gallons more of kerosene turned into contrails. At $5 to $6 dollars a gallon, it's expensive. At least I don't pay for the fuel. In fact, I can earn a bonus if I beat the projected fuel burn.