I’m going to assume that by now you all appreciate that planes move pretty quickly; that’s why when you board a plane in Manchester you can be in Paris in under 90 minutes.
However, when you’re actually on a plane - or even when you look up at one flying overhead - it can be easy to forget just how fast it is moving. Videos such as this one help:
In a clip shared on TikTok, a passenger onboard a flight manages to capture the moment another plane flies past mid-journey - and it really does help to give a bit of context on just how fast they can shift.
Advert
The video begins from inside the plane’s cabin, with a text overlay that reads: “You don’t realise how fast you’re actually flying until…”
It then cuts to a shot of outside the window where we can see the plane’s wing above some fluffy-looking clouds before another plane whizzes by. The text on the screen continues: “You watch a plane fly by.”
The video has since had thousands of views and picked up plenty of comments, one person said: “It’s cool to watch, I experienced this during my flight from Seattle to Vegas.
"The other plane was below and it just zoomed past in milliseconds.”
Advert
Another commented: “I always feel like we are not moving at all but then I see planes fly outside.”
While a third added: “I swear when you’re up in the air it feels like your only going as fast as a car on the road.”
For those interested, your average commercial passenger jet flies at around around 460 – 575 mph when cruising at about 36,000ft, according to flightdeckfriend.com.
Flying magazine, has also shared the maximum speeds for three popular commercial planes - the Boeing 747 which hits 614 mph, the Boeing 737, which reaches 588 mph and the Airbus A380, which can move at 737 mph.
Advert
Earlier this month, Reddit users were left shocked after watching a clip filmed from inside the cockpit of a plane during takeoff.
A clip taken from inside a cockpit showed a couple of pilots all set to take off, with a bunch of different dials and buttons laid out in front of them.
The runway, meanwhile, is dark with its own lights shining brightly as the plane picks up pace before eventually taking off into the sky. Science, eh?
However, while most people found the clip pretty interesting - it was shared to the ‘Damn that’s interesting’ subreddit, after all - many viewers were surprised by how slowly the plane appeared to be moving before it made it into the air.
Claire Reid