Heathrow airport landing live

Basically, as the plane was technically travelling faster than the speed of sound, it would not have broken the sound barrier as it was helped along by the jet stream, which was moving about 250-260mph.
 
Greg0986 said:
Basically, as the plane was technically travelling faster than the speed of sound, it would not have broken the sound barrier as it was helped along by the jet stream, which was moving about 250-260mph.
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So....is the speed relative to the speed of the air assistance - would a plane have to be doing 700mph more than the air that is being assisted by?
 
Jimbeam3678 said:
Explainable in basic terms or is in depth?
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Say you're flying at 500MPH with zero wind, your air speed would be 500MPH as that's the speed of the air coming past you. Now add a 200MPH tail wind, that's pushing you along to fly at 700MPH at ground speed, but the air coming past you is still 500MPH.
 
Greg0986 said:
Yes, to break the sound barrier it'll have to be doing 767mph+ without any wind assistance.
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So would it have the counter effect in reverse, in that say for example if the wind had an effect of 200mph against, a plane would need to be doing 900mph ground speed.
 
wedrum said:
800mph how would they know the plane could survive such speeds
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It's ground speed, wind speed and plane speed cumulative. Like walking along a travelator in an airport, you're still only walking at say 3 MPH but if the travelator is also moving at 3MPH, your ground speed is 6MPH.
 
As a frequent transatlantic flyer i'd still prefer the scheduled flight time. You can't get any decent sleep on a 4 hour 56 min flight once all the meals and such are taken into account.
 
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