A commercial plane unexpectedly accelerated to supersonic speeds due to near-record-breaking wind that the Mid-Atlantic region faced over the weekend.
Spotted by The Independent, several flights were reaching ungodly speeds during their flights due to record-breaking wind that occurred during the mid-Atlantic region this past weekend. Most notably, a flight departing Philadelphia, PA, and heading to Doha, Qatar, reached nearly 840 mph, the fastest recorded plane to fly over the weekend.
Additionally, a flight from Washington Dulles International Airport to London Heathrow International Airport was reported to have reached 802 mph. The Washington Post reported that the flight arrived 45 minutes early because of the wind. Another flight from NYC to Lisbon, Portugal, was reported to exceed 835mph.
All these flights exceeded 800 mph, which, as WFLA-TV Tampa Bay Chief Meteorologist and Climate Specialist Jeff Beradelli points out, all three flights were faster than the speed of sound, which is around 767 mph. The speed of sound can vary from 660 mph and 790 mph depending on altitude and temperatures.
Breaking the speed of sound is a rarity on commercial flights these days. Concorde jets, which were first released back in the 1970s, were capable of cruising speeds of over Mach 2. However, they were both noisy and absolutely guzzled fuel. They were disccontinued on 2003.
Elsewhere, the Washington-Baltimore region office of the National Weather Service wrote on X/Twitter that the 265mph wind speed was the second-highest measured since in local history. For context, the wind speed was 2 mph shy of beating the record-breaking wind speed of 267 mph, which was recorded in December 2002.
For more science news, check out the 2000-year-old scrolls that are now readable thanks to machine learning, as well as why NASA astronauts could be at risk of a moon quake.
Image Credit: Aaron Foster / Getty Images
Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
