On Saturday the 2nd I flew with my wife and daughter on US Airways flight 567 to Orlando for an eight day trip. What was interesting was the speed of our flight. It took a little over three hours and at one point our ground speed was over 590 knots. We averaged over 500 kts from takeoff to touchdown in Orlando. I looked at our flight path on FlightAware and pulled our stats from that site, During the flight we flew just to the north of KDFW and I snapped several pictures from our cruising altitude of 35,000 feet of KDFW and downtown Dallas. Our groundspeed was so fast it only took a little over 90 minutes to pass KDFW from our takeoff at Sky Harbor.

 

All this begs the question, has anyone (outside of flying on the Concorde) been on a flight that posted a faster groundspeed? This flight wasn't my fastest flight ever--flew once from Seattle to SFO and exceeded 610 knots groundspeed.

 

Regards,

 

John

The past couple of weeks or so have presented what in my memory have been the highest consistent W to E winds aloft in perhaps 15 to 20 years. I do my FSX flight planning on an IRL site and the native FSX weather engine has closely conformed. I flew FSX today (HondaJet) from New Orleans to Bloomington, Indiana, and then from Bloomington to Easton, Maryland. Both flights were at FL 330, and for the most part the winds were from the west at around 100 knots. I flew from Bloomington to New Orleans on Saturday at FL350 and experienced winds aloft at FL 350 at over 100 knots from the west. Given a bit more time I can reference my flight log and confirm the average wind direction and speed at my cruise FL.

I flew the 787 from NRT to LAX a few weeks back just before they were grounded and we had achieved 677 knts ( ~ 780 mph) with a lot of wind push. It was pretty impressive, though I don't know what is par for the course on this aircraft. Neat plane, by the way. Hope they get the kinks worked out soon!

In the simulator, I flew a flight where I pushed over 700 knots on the ground speed because of the winds out of Tokyo. This was with real world weather.

All this begs the question, has anyone (outside of flying on the Concorde) been on a flight that posted a faster groundspeed?

Regards,

John

 

Yes but that's classified. <--- just kidding.

 

Looking at your flight when you reached "Fort Worth Center" (FWD) at FL350 (35,000ft or 250mb) you obtained your highest ground speed of 592kts. If you look here, (FYI: NOAA is more reliable but Wyoming is more gui friendly) enter your date and click on FWD on the map will yield these upper winds:

 

72249 FWD Ft Worth Observations at 00Z 02 Feb 2013

250.0 10550 -45.5 -80.5 1 0.00 285 154 338.3 338.3 338.3

Temp of -45.5, Winds 285 at 154kts

 

72249 FWD Ft Worth Observations at 12Z 02 Feb 2013

250.0 10600 -48.1 -58.1 30 0.06 295 136 334.4 334.7 334.4

Temp -48.1 winds 295 at 136kts

 

Great tail winds if your heading East...

 

RJ

In the simulator, I flew a flight where I pushed over 700 knots on the ground speed because of the winds out of Tokyo. This was with real world weather.

I have occasionally experienced possibly inaccurate FSX default real-world winds. Approaching EGKK, 70 kt winds at 2000 ft rapidly shifted to 15 kt, causing the autopilot to demand a 7500 ft/min descent rate before I was able to recover manually.

As follow-up to this post, my wife, daughter and I flew home on the 10th. Headwinds made the flight four and a half hours long as is typical for this time of year. I was surprised when we left the gate several minutes early--airlines don't mess around anymore once everyone has gotten onboard. Going to Orlando I snapped a good picture of KDFW as we passed over it at FL350. On the return flight I snapped a picture of Disney's Epcot shortly after our takeoff in Orlando. I may post the two pics, along with a few others, in the real pics screenshots forum.

 

Our flight home, US Airways Flt. 415, only flew at an initial altitude of FL300. That surprised me, it's one of the lowest altitudes I've flown in a cross country flight. Winds higher up must have been strong.

 

John

Had a fairly fast flight a few weeks ago in the King Air.