JFK flight sets trans-Atlantic speed record

British Airways planes are parked at Heathrow Airport in London. A British Airways plane flew between New York and London in less than five hours, setting a record for subsonic plane travel. AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File.

By Jonathan Sperling

A British Airways flight took passengers from Queens to the Queen in record time last Saturday, shattering a subsonic flight time record from New York to London.

British Airways Flight 112 left John F. Kennedy International Airport at 6:47 p.m. on Saturday and arrived at Heathrow Airport in London at 4:43 a.m. on Sunday, for a total flight time of four hours and 56 minutes, The New York Times reported. There were 400 passengers onboard the aircraft.

The plane, a Boeing 747, reached a top speed of 825 miles per hour while over the North Atlantic, helped greatly by a strong tailwind. Because of the help received from the tailwind off the coast of Newfoundland, the flight was not considered supersonic, though it did beat the speed of sound: 767 miles per hour.

The typical flight time for a British Airways flight travelling from New York to London is over six hours, and the average flight time across all airlines can be as long as seven hours.

A Virgin Atlantic flight that also took off from JFK on Saturday night came within a minute of beating the time set by British Airways Flight 112, landing at Heathrow four hours and 57 minutes after it left Queens. Another Virgin Atlantic flight made the trip in five hours.

“We always prioritize safety over speed records,” British Airways spokesperson Chip Garner told the Times, “but our highly trained pilots made the most of the conditions to get customers back to London well ahead of time.”