ROANOKE, Va. – It’s commonly known that when you travel from the U.S. to Europe, your flight going there is faster than the flight back.
This is traced back to the west-to-east direction and speed of upper-level winds.
This Sunday, however, United Airlines Flight 64 flew from Newark, New Jersey to Lisbon, Portugal in under six hours.
The northern portion and southern portion of the jet stream converged along a strong north-to-south temperature gradient, resulting in extreme winds at about the 30,000 to 35,000-foot level (aka. cruising altitude).
The Sunday morning weather balloon launch out of Washington D.C. shows the extreme winds of 265 mph at that level.
(This was part of a storm system that brought snow to the Northeast over the weekend.)
The extreme wind prompted the plane to a peak speed of 835 to 840 mph Sunday night, according to tracking statistics from Flight Aware.
The speed of sound is 767 mph, so did this break the sound barrier?
No, it did not. Because the plane was traveling within the 265 mph jet stream, it was traveling with the wind. Its air speed, therefore, was not faster than 767 mph.