British Airways breaks record of all time for subsonic speed

A British Airways broke previous speed records as its flight recently completed its journey from New York to London in under 5 hours.

According to the details, A British Airways flight Boeing 747 completed the entire journey in an impressive four hours and 56 minutes by reaching a top speed of 1,327 kph (830 mph).

According to the data available with online flight tracker service Flightradar24, a British Airways Boeing 747 that departed from the JFK Airport on Saturday reached Heathrow shortly after 11.20 p.m.

An online flight-tracking service, was the first to share the impressive news. In its Twitter post, Flightradar24 also pointed out that two other flights took advantage of the extremely fast-moving jet stream, but did not manage to beat the BA one.

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Fastest across the Atlantic tonight from New York to London so far is #BA112 at 4hr56m. #VS4 in 4:57, and #VS46 in 4:59. https://t.co/gfYoHGV3Y6https://t.co/kMhjCqdEtt

If we're not mistaken, BA now retakes the fastest subsonic NY-London crossing from Norwegian. pic.twitter.com/Sr1GPeAjuh

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) February 9, 2020

Those two other flights also flying from New York to London were both Virgin Atlantic aircraft, landing four hours and 57 minutes after takeoff, and four hours and 59 minutes — extremely similar to the BA flight, just a touch slower.

A typical transatlantic flight on this route takes around six hours and 13 minutes.

All three flights beat the previous subsonic transatlantic flight record holder since January 2018, which was held by Norwegian, at five hours and 13 minutes.

A British Airways stated that “We always prioritize safety over speed records, but our highly trained pilots made the most of the conditions to get customers back to London well ahead of time.”