Quote:
Originally Posted by pylon
OK Av Nerds, explain me this.
I just came back from Maui on flight 3005 on that Thomas Cook 757 blast from the past early 90's Jalopy in 5hrs 11min! Even the flight attendant said she has never run that flight, that quick. Apparently there was a serious tail wind. The ground speed indicator showed over 800 MPH and read as high as 812 mph during the flight (which I am sure was a glitch). I know the plane technically didn't break the sound barrier, but if it was possible, there was another jet, with a completely neutral tail wind a few kms away, going exactly mach 1, would we still have covered distance faster than them?
Here is the log, she was boogying right along, we hit a top speed of 1184 kph.
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/W.../CYYC/tracklog |
I came back from Maui on Sunday night with Air Canada, we had good tail winds but only hit a ground speed of about 618mph (flight was only 5 hours 39 minutes). I remember seeing weather reports talking about the "Pineapple Express" system heading towards the west coast from Hawaii, good chance that is what your flight caught and got some epic tail winds as a result.
Airspeed is the speed at which the aircraft is moving through the air (also called True Airspeed or TAS), ground speed is the speed of the aircraft over the ground. So up in the cockpit the airspeed indicator would have been at a normal cruise speed for the 757 (according to Wiki it is 530mph), but then you add a tail wind "pushing" the aircraft and you get the ground speeds that you saw indicated.
As to your last question, yes you would have beat that theoretical aircraft going Mach 1 with no tailwind to increase their ground speed.
Check out this website
http://www.groundspeedrecords.com/ where pilots upload shots of their ground speed readings and you can see the highest ones submitted to the website.
Edit: Oh and True Airspeed is different from Indicated Airspeed. Indicated is what shows on the gauge in the cockpit, but True is the ACTUAL speed the aircraft is actually traveling through the air mass it is in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_airspeed
Edit Edit: Here is the track from our flight back on Sunday:
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/A...735Z/PHOG/CYYC