[Subjectivist]

A plane flying from New York to London Heathrow hit near supersonic speeds yesterday after getting caught up in a powerhouse jet stream.
British Airways Flight 114, a Boeing 777-200 jet, took off from JFK at 10.50pm Eastern Standard Time (EST), and landed at 9.06am local time at London Heathrow.
The total flight time was five hours and 16 minutes, well short of the estimated minimum six-hour journey.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/trave ... z3ONLOBPVf

[Sixstrings]

A plane flying from New York to London Heathrow hit near supersonic speeds yesterday after getting caught up in a powerhouse jet stream.
British Airways Flight 114, a Boeing 777-200 jet, took off from JFK at 10.50pm Eastern Standard Time (EST), and landed at 9.06am local time at London Heathrow.
The total flight time was five hours and 16 minutes, well short of the estimated minimum six-hour journey.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/trave ... z3ONLOBPVf

Hm, well that sounds unusual.

Is this in fact unusual? Is it climate change or something? There's something weird going on lately, these harsh winters, polar vortexes every year.

[vox_mundi]

Reminds me of an old Twilight Zone episode - The Odyssey of Flight 33 (24 Feb. 1961)

http://www.imdb.com/rg/VIDEO_PLAY/LINK/ ... 520833305/

Passing through the sound barrier a commercial airliner inadvertently travels back in time.

[dolanbaker]

Smart pilot, drafting the jetstream probably saved a fortune in fuel as well.

No Six, Jetstreams happen all the time, this was just luck that it was going exactly where the pilot wanted to go as well.

[Subjectivist]

A 777 burns between 2,500 and 3,000 gallons per hour in flight on average so this trip saved about 2,000 gallons of fuel. Around here jet fuel is around $4.00/gallon so that is a nice $8,000 savings for this leg of the trip. Of course sometimes an airline is fighting bad weather that causes them to fly around longer than a straight line trip so they end up spending extra on those flights.