A British Airways Boeing 777 on a flight from London to New York went supersonic.
British Airways Jet Goes Supersonic
Nice clickbait, but no, it didn't go "supersonic", it arrived surprisingly early due to a high tailwind. Groundspeed != airspeed.
I'd imagine a 777 actually breaking the sound barrier would be spectacularly destructive…
I was on a flight from Vancouver to Frankfurt that arrived more than an hour early (jet stream was really far north). The flight display had the speed as a fair bit higher than the standard cruising speed.
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The speed of sound is lower at high altitudes than at see level, so its easier to go supersonic at higher altitudes (they did report speeds of 745 mph, but didn't exceed the 761 mph speed of sound at sea level).
Bill Magruder took a McDonnell-Douglas DC-8 to Mach 1.01 in 1968. He took it to 52,000 feet and put it into a power dive and broke the sound barrier at 45,000 feet (which is not the same as the sound barrier at sea level).
I do rotary wing testing, not fixed wing, so I'm not an expert on anything past about 0.5M, but they didn't break the speed of sound with the aircraft as the wings would have ripped off due to the dynamic pressure. I don't think the 777 is rated past 0.9M, and there is no way it a trained crew would have taken it past the cruising speed of 0.85M anyways. As mentioned above, click bait.
Being cheap is OK. Being a clueless sanctimonious condescending douchebag is just Vlad's MO.
A British Airways Boeing 777 on a flight from London to New York went supersonic.
Didn't the Concord due that for real like 20 - 30 years ago?
Didn't the Concord due that for real like 20 - 30 years ago?
Concorde did JFK to Heathrow in 2 hours, 52 minutes, 59 seconds on 7 February 1996. Cruising speed was Mach 2.04 (2,179 km/h or 1,354 mph), with a cruising altitude of 60,000 ft.
That's crazy. But it was regularly doing transatlantic flights above the sound barrier wasn't it?
SR71 did it in under two hours, and had to refuel during the flight.
It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.
- Josiah Stamp
Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.
- H.G. Wells
That's crazy. But it was regularly doing transatlantic flights above the sound barrier wasn't it?
Yes, Mach 2.04 is just over twice the speed of sound. It was designed to cruise at supersonic speeds.
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Didn't the Concord due that for real like 20 - 30 years ago?
Not really shocking, given the concord was designed for supersonic flight. Note the slightly different wing shape compared to a 777…
Again, it doesn't really matter how fast the groundspeed was, "going supersonic" is all about airspeed. If I happen to be paragliding and catch a 700mph tailwind, I will be moving across the ground at 700mph, but I certainly won't be flying "supersonic". Conversely, in the post about breaking the sound barrier in a power dive, they would have covered almost no ground, given that they were going more or less straight down, but the fact that the didn't go anywhere has nothing to do with whether it was supersonic flight or not.
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