Storm Ciara Helps New York To London British Airways Flight Break Speed Record

A flight has broken the subsonic (slower than the speed of sound) record for travel between New York and London thanks to Storm Ciara.

PA

British Airways flight BA112 left JFK airport and crossed the Atlantic overnight, touching down at Heathrow in just 4hrs 56mins, according to online flight tracking service Flight Radar 24.

The Boeing 747 was just two minutes faster than a Virgin Atlantic Airbus A350 flight, which landed at Heathrow shortly afterwards.

To put these times into perspective, the average flight from New York to London takes 6hrs 13mins.

Prior to these flights, the record was held by Norwegian, which reached London Gatwick from JFK in 5hrs 13mins in January 2018.

The record-breaking flights were aided in no small part by Storm Ciara and its 200mph jet stream, with the BA flight reaching a peak ground speed of 825mph at the eastern edge of Newfoundland, at about 35,000ft.

Speaking to The Independent, a BA spokesperson said: "We always prioritise safety over speed records, but our highly trained pilots made the most of the conditions to get customers back to London well ahead of time."

A BA spokesperson added on Twitter that the company didn't know yet if the crew were aware of their record-breaking feat.

But of course, while the storm helped people travelling from west to east over the Atlantic to save time, it had the opposite impact for those travelling from east to west, with some flights from London to New York taking one and a half hours longer.

Indeed, passengers on the record-breaking flight can consider themselves very lucky indeed, as they're about the only people in the world who've had their travel plans improved by Storm Ciara.

Topics: UK News, british airways, travel, record

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey