Haha... Gotta love those Eastbound routes...

The wind?

I got the PMDG 747-400X up to 695 knots on way from Boston to London once. Was flying at match .90 and had about 150 knot tail wind. Got there an hour 15 min early. Sadly it was not enough to beat the fastest Pilot alive on VATSIM. That honor belongs to Mr. John Hampton at American Virtual Airlines at 702 knots with a 200 knot tail wind and yeah I saw the screen shot of his PFD, or I never would have believed it. He also flys on FS9 which is the only sim I ever seen or experienced 200 knot winds. The Most I ever seen in FSX was 170.

Wait, we're supposed to keep the airspeed below the red tick-marks on the speed-tape? I was wondering why no one else made the LAX-JFK route in 2 hours.

Wait, we're supposed to keep the airspeed below the red tick-marks on the speed-tape? I was wondering why no one else made the LAX-JFK route in 2 hours.

I think it worked out to around 2:45 YYC to YYZ....if only it was that fast in real life... As you can see though having the thing pegged at .80 vs. the more probable .76 figure that things seem to be cruising at nowadays shaved a lot of time. Ahh I miss those Kelowna Flightcraft Mach .86 days...;(

With the various cost indexes I've been trying, I seem to cruise at .79more often than not.. But before running this plane, I was not awarethat they climbed as fast as they did up to mach speeds.. In the past,I would run 300 knots most all the time up to usually .78 or so.I considered 310 on a climb to be goosing along pretty good..But with the higher cost indexes, I've been running in the 320 range,and sometimes 330 on descent.. I knew 747's would often run that fast,but didn't realize the 737's did. I generally like to get on down the road, so lately I've been using an indexof 80 quite a bit. I saw a video of a Southwest 737-700 cockpit crew, andthey claimed to be using a cost index of 99, when the visitor asked themwhat they ran. He seemed surprised that they ran that high. I tried a flightusing 99, and it was edging the red line all the way up and down.. :/ I've seen some pretty strong winds aloft in FSX, but lately they seem tobe pretty mild where I've been flying. Almost too mild.. Makes me wonderif it's accurate.M Keith

That's one hell of a tail wind eh? I get some good tail winds from CYVR-CYYC. The return flight is always a lot longer. Today, I had a tail wind of 56knts and had a G/S of 532 at FL385. Gotta love those early arrivals!

Contrary to popular belief, the winds are not always blistering at high altitudes. As an example, on my last real world flight to Shanghai from Los Angeles in a 777, the winds flying west were 15 mph tailwind, probably why the were using that route. We were flying across the northern Pacific quite a ways south of Alaska. I have been on many flights like this on this route flying even as far north as just south of Mt. McKinley. Probably why the real world flight arrives as much as one hour or more earlier than when flown on the exact same route at the exact same time in the sim.

Wait, we're supposed to keep the airspeed below the red tick-marks on the speed-tape?

Ideally that would be a good idea. I fly all 3 of my PMDG planes one notch below the redline. 747-400X mach .90MD-11X mach .85NGX mach .80

My uncle who was a Captain on DC10's once said to me "Today's 70kt headwind, is tomorrow's 10kt tailwind".