A British Airways flight is thought to have established a new record for the fastest 3500 mile subsonic transatlantic crossing in just 4 hours and 56 minutes
The flight took off from JFK Airport in New York early on Sunday morning and was scheduled to land at Heathrow at 6.25am on Sunday but arrived 102 minutes early at 4.43am.
A Virgin flight was also making the same journey at about the same time but, according to flight tracking website Flightradar24, it was beaten to the new record by BA by just one minute.
Both flights were helped by strong tailwinds provided by Storm Ciara.
The BA and Virgin flights were still some way off the quickest transatlantic passenger flight which was set by Concorde 24 years ago in 1996 – flying at more than twice the speed of sound for a journey of two hours and 52 minutes.
“We always prioritise 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,” a BA statement said.
The previous record was held by Norwegian, whose Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner flew from New York to London Gatwick in five hours and 13 minutes in 2018.
