Near record wind speeds resulted in multiple international flights over the weekend exceeding 800 miles per hour — far faster than the 500 mph to 600 mph speeds at which commercial flights usually travel.
Powerful, 265 mile-per-hour winds propelled three planes on international routes, allowing them to reach speeds greater than 800 miles per hour and arrive at their destinations early.
The wind speed was the second-highest ever recorded, according to the National Weather Service.
“For those flying eastbound in this jet, there will be quite a tail wind,” the National Weather Service’s Baltimore-Washington office wrote on X on Saturday, referring to the jet stream.
The fast-moving flights included Virgin Atlantic Flight 22, which departed from Washington Dulles International Airport at 10:45 p.m. Saturday and landed in London 45 minutes early, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.
At 11:20 p.m. at a cruising altitude of 33,350 feet, the aircraft reached a top speed of 802 miles per hour, according to the site.
United Airlines Flight 64 from Newark to Lisbon was also aided by the jet stream, a narrow band of strong wind that flows at an aircraft’s cruising altitude. The plane flew as fast as 838 miles per hour and landed in Lisbon 20 minutes early, also according to FlightAware.
The fastest moving flight of the day was American Airlines Flight 120 from Philadelphia to Doha, Qatar, which reached a max speed of 840 miles per hour. It arrived 27 minutes early, FlightAware data shows.
By comparison, the British Airways Concorde flew at a cruising speed of 1350 miles per hour, more than twice the speed of sound, making it from New York to London in under three hours in February 1996. Concorde was taken out of service in 2003.
The effects of climate change are expected to cause more turbulence in air travel in the years to come. That could mean more widespread delays and cancellations across airlines, in what is already an unpredictable industry.
More frequent severe weather events will likely cause disruptions.
“There are a lot of ways climate change can affect air travel. Thunderstorms are an obvious one,” Wired magazine reporter, Amanda Hoover, told CBS News. “When there is more heat in the air, there is more moisture, more thunderstorms.”
Scientists have also linked the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires to global warming. These kinds of events require airlines to leave more room between departures and also map out alternative routes.
Weather events as simple as extremely high temperatures can also slow things down.
“Really high heat can cause delays because a plane in high temperatures needs more time and more distance to take off to fight gravity,” Hoover said.
