Storm Ciara helps plane beat transatlantic flight record | Hacker News Reader

Storm Ciara helps plane beat transatlantic flight record

bbc.com

134 pointsmpweiher117 comments

>The fastest transatlantic crossing belongs to BA Concorde, which flew from New York to London in two hours 52 minutes and 59 seconds in 1996 - hitting a top speed of 1,350 mph.

That was the fastest commercial flight. The fastest transatlantic crossing by an aircraft was the SR-71 in 1974:

1 hour 55 minutes Average speed over 1800 mph

https://tacairnet.com/2015/09/02/the-sr-71s-record-breaking-...

> 1 hour 55 minutes Average speed over 1800 mph

It felt weird that my first reaction was to wonder what took so long. For some reason I was thinking that surely the Blackbird could make the crossing about 60 minutes faster than listed.

Looking at a map, I saw that the air line distance from Fortaleza to Dakar is just over 1,900 miles though. So I'm thinking "transatlantic" must mean more than my own basic definition. (Plus I don't know if these locations would have enough runway for the SR-71, or if the reason we haven't heard of faster is because US taxpayers aren't footing the gas bill to arrange a shorter route)

If you read the article, you will see that this is about flying between New York and London.

I did read the article:

"The fastest transatlantic crossing belongs to BA Concorde, which flew from New York to London in two hours 52 minutes and 59 seconds in 1996 - hitting a top speed of 1,350 mph."

PSA: If you don't want people to quote HN guidelines, please don't assume they haven't read the article. Thanks.

The blackbirds have to show down to refuel.

I don't understand. Are you saying they refueled over the Atlantic while setting this record?

Most long distance Blackbird flights involved taking off at low fuel weights, then refueling shortly after take off. So yes, the record probably involved refueling over the Atlantic.

They refilled immediately after takeoff.

Then, if they got a full tank of JP-7 around NYC, that gives them a one-way range of 3250 miles, which is less than the 2999 nautical miles of LGA -> LHR. The SR-71's range is a hair over 3200 nautical miles. Getting a full tank of the special JP-7 or landing around LHR would be do or die time, because that would be just about bingo fuel.

Is the 3200nm range while at cruising speed or for max speed? The link mentioned it was in afterburner for a long period.

They're approximately the same speed.

The link posted by @RcouF1uZ4gsC contains a graphic that shows a 'refuel' point over the mid-Atlantic and the linked article says this:

> ...it needed a minimum of one in-flight refueling, thanks to the astonishing amount of fuel it consumed while in afterburner. ... Having already surged across the Atlantic in a sustained supersonic cruise at speeds in excess of Mach 2.5-2.6 ... Sullivan began a descent that would bring him to the only refueling point of their mission. After tanking up, the duo climbed away and once again nudged the throttles ahead. The time taken up by the in-flight refueling was deemed virtually negligible when the Blackbird flew through the London gates.

So, according to the linked article from @RcouF1uZ4gsC, yes, the record time included one refuel during the NY to London route.

Slow*

Not necessarily. The SR-71's range was 3250 miles, which is ~10% less than the NYC to LHR distance. It might encroach bingo fuel, but maybe not. If they refilled to completely full in New York, they could either refill or land once reaching the London area.

> Slow*

I do enjoy the idea of a mid-air transatlantic showdown for fuel though.

It looks like this is not the fastest commercial flight but the fastest subsonic flight. The Blackbird and Concord records you are talking about are a different category.

The Concorde was definitely supersonic. That was the whole point of the aircraft to enable commercial supersonic travel.

I think there was some confusion on what the "this" keyword is referencing in the comment (one of the reasons I hate it in code :))

It's weird to see people continuing to argue about this, when the article itself makes pretty clear that this is about the subsonic record. Concorde and Blackbird are completely irrelevant. Of course they're faster, but that's not the point.

The entire reason a subsonic flight could go at speeds normally only possible to supersonic aircraft, is because of the speed of the jet stream driven by Ciara. The plane is flying at subsonic speeds within a moving pocket of air that adds quite a lot to that speed. That's the interesting part about this story.

Indeed, the airspeed/groundspeed distinction continues to confuse people. The plane still moves at subsonic speed, as that's w/r/t surrounding air.

TL;DR: Rocket plane: hold my beer

A rocket-powered plane vaguely similar to the X-15 could cut that to about ½ to 1/3 the time. That would likely require a space suit, an RCS, ablative coatings and exotic materials. Ejection seat?: good luck with that over mach 3.

a ballistic flight could do that distance in 30 minutes. musk wants to commercialize spacex's new big rocket - aptly named "starship" - in that way. we'll see if he can get over environmental concerns, the noise during takeoff will be life threatening.

The Kerbal player in me has a tentative solution: add a first stage for takeoff assists made of jet engines, not rocket engines. It would still be noisy, but perhaps not that noisy; after boosting it to some sensible altitude, the stage would detach and Starship's rockets would take over. The jet engine stage would of course be recoverable (parachutes, or it could fly itself back like a drone, because why not).

You mean this [1]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipTwo

We must put a stop to performance enhancing storms! /s

I see people talking about this but they all seem to have a hard time understanding air speed and ground speed.

The way I like to explain it is imagine a person walking up an escalator. Your total speed is your walking speed (air speed) plus the escalator speed combined (ground speed). Just walking up regular stairs would be like an aircraft flying with no wind.

It can also happen in reverse. If you walked down the up escalator your walking speed (air speed) may be equal to the escalator. Your total speed (ground speed) may even be zero. Aircraft leaving London going to NY were fighting the wind their ground speed was reduced.

Also why it's still a subsonic flight even with a ground speed greater than the speed of sound (~1200 km/h).

Edit: as explained in the article, hum.

Speed of sound is 767 mph. Without the wind, they were at 801 mph, which is still well over the sound barrier. I still don't understand.

They weren't at 801mph airspeed. The article didn't make it clear exactly, but:

"The Boeing 747-436 reached speeds of 825 mph (1,327 km/h) as it rode a jet stream accelerated by Storm Ciara."

Ie max ground speed 1327km/h. And:

"The jet stream reached speeds of 260 mph (418 km/h) on Sunday morning, according to BBC Weather."

So if their max ground speed coincides with max wind speed and the wind was perfectly tail, their air speed would have been closer to 909km/hour.

The article says it's "slower than 801 mph", but sadly doesn't specify how much slower. The ground speed was 825 mph, so if Ciara is so impressive, I'd expect it to give a bigger boost than a measly 24 mph. The article doesn't specify the unassisted airspeed, unfortunately. Considering the jet stream was moving at 260 mph, naive math would suggest the air speed was 565 mph.

...which is about the commercial cruise speed of a Boeing 747 (570 mph), so your naive math may be pretty close ;)

As an aside, the speed of sound varies depending on pressure and temperature. At the cruising height of an airliner it's typically significantly less than the speed at 0m/20 degrees. In fact at 35,000 feet it's usually closer to 660 mph.

When you get close to the speed of sound in air, all sorts of weird aerodynamic effects happen. Because it varies, the term "mach" is used to denote 1x the speed of sound (regardless of what the pressure or temperature is) - so an aircraft flying at mach 0.85 is at 85% the speed of sound for that height and temperature.

The only thing that matters to an aircraft at altitude is the airspeed.

If it’s windy enough could they have done a 180 on arrival and landed into wind blowing at the usual landing speed, coming down near vertically with respect to the ground?

Here’s a bush plane doing this at 40 knots:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7vP13XPMNfc

Technically yes, but the jet stream blows at high altitude.

I’ve been on a plane that did this before, only our jet stream current was a bit slower and thus our ground speed was hovering right around 800mph for most of the duration.

The turbulence was rough going in and out of the jet stream, but while “in it”, it was about like any other normal flight.

We ended up shaving over an hour off the flight time (SFO - LHR, might’ve been 90min in fact), but alas, due to the “law of early flights”, we then wasted a lot of that time penalty boxed waiting for an open gate.

I’m surprised they didn’t slow down to conserve fuel and arrive on-time. In the USA, if your flight is more than 20 minutes early, you are usually stuck on the tarmac waiting for a gate.

80 minutes of fuel for that plane must be very expensive. Is it possibly to fly that plane, at say 200 knots ground speed, and save on fuel? Or are they stuck at their speed they filed in the flight plan, to keep traffic separation?

It doesn't always work to go slower. The speed of least drag is an airspeed, not a ground speed. And commercial jet engines are most efficient around 90% thrust, not at lower settings. So going slower can make you less efficient.

Does less efficient result in more total fuel loss, in this specific case, since the engine will be running for a different amount of time?

Can't really tell without knowing their weight and available cruising levels. But in general you should not run a commercial jet engine at lower thrust settings. The optimum altitude as calculated by the flight management system is essentially the altitude at which 90% thrust gets you the best cruise speed.

That's also why flying low is really bad for fuel consumption, you're going to have to decrease thrust and you'll be aerodynamically less efficient at the same time.

At lower altitude the jet has to push aside a lot more air.

Yes, but to the previous posters point, turbofans operate much less efficiently at lower altitudes. They are optimized to run the majority of cruise at a very specific set of altitude and power output settings. This is compounded by the fact that fuel load also assumes a set of assumptions of the flight plan

This sounds wrong to me because I've read that the plane uses 90% thrust or something around that to take off, and at cruise, less thrust is needed.

I'm not sure where the 90% comes from. What is it refering to? Rotor stage RPM, static thrust, fuel flow?

In general turbine engines are limited mostly by the temperature at the first stage of turbine blades after the combustion stage. It's hard to get reliable instrumentation in this zone so a proxy temperature is often taken from a later stage.

In older airliners there was a table of max ITT values varying with altitude and outside air temperature. In modern FADEC engines the computer does the same calculations. It's not unusual for smaller jets to be set at their max continuous thrust setting shortly after takeoff and be left there until the beginning of the descent. Modern airliners will be flying a cost optimised Mach number.

That Mach number is entered on their flight plan and is used as a basis for ensuring they are separated from other flights on the north Atlantic tracks so they wouldn't be able to change it readily.

The interesting part of all of this is that they would have been assigned an altitude for the crossing, at high altitudes maximum speeds drop (because flutter margins are proportional to velocity rather than effective pressure) but stall speeds increase so the range of viable flying speeds is actually quite limited at cruise altitudes. They probably couldn't have slowed down if they wanted too.

I was referring to the N1 and N2 values. But I realized I was wrong and that jet engines do operate at say 90% N1 during cruise.

Aircraft performance metrics of all sorts are generally U shaped. There will be an optimum altitude and airspeed for a chosen regime and deviating from it in either direction will result in lower performance.

So if you are shooting for miles per pound of fuel, there is a best. You will lose total trip fuel if you throttle up and go faster and you will lose total trip fuel if you throttle down and go slower.

Air resistance goes up by the square of the velocity, so it takes more and more thrust to go faster. The most efficient thrust per unit of speed is therefore somewhat less than the most efficient thrust per unit of fuel.

I've only had some college physics and no aeronautical engineering so I could be way off. Of course there are other factors like the amount of lift per unit of velocity and so on...

> Air resistance goes up by the square of the velocity

But you measure speed in this context relative to the air, not the ground.

The fact that the plane is now moving across land much much quicker due to winds aloft is completely irrelevant from an aerodynamics perspective.

The plane doesn’t even “know” that it’s getting there sooner.

I'm strictly arguing with the point about engines being efficient at 90% thrust which is independent of wind.

> Air resistance goes up by the square of the velocity

This is true of form drag. Airplanes are also subject to a somewhat counterintuitive induced drag that is inversely proportional to airspeed. The minimum total drag is therefore somewhere between a slow speed and a fast speed.

There are three optimal speeds depending on what you're trying to optimize. Maximum range (distance per unit of fuel) is best glide speed, which would be a painfully slow way to get somewhere. Maximum endurance (time per unit of fuel) is roughly max endurance divided by 1.316—even slower. "Optimum cruise," or Carson's speed (max speed per unit of fuel) is roughly max endurance times 1.316.

What's the relationship of these values to the efficiency curve of the engines?

I'm pretty sure best glide speed times 1.3 can be achieved with less than 90% thrust from the engines of a typical commercial airliner.

No idea. :)

> the optimal speed of an albatross is about 32 mph, and for a Boeing 747 is about 540 mph. Both these numbers are remarkably close to the real values. Albatrosses fly at about 30-55 mph, and the cruise speed of a Boeing 747 is about 567 mph

https://www.wired.com/2012/10/can-we-build-a-more-efficient-...

laden or unladen?

If you have a tail wind, you face far less resistance.

Negative. The aircraft doesn’t know it’s flying with a tailwind. The onboard GPS and the human bladders know.

But more speed = more lift, so you can cruise through thinner air at higher altitudes.

It’s still less efficient, but some of that squaring works to your advantage.

Same in Europe, it's happened to me multiple times. It really riles people up for some reason, with people just flat out ignoring crew orders to remain seated etc.

I would think it was to reach London before they closed off airports due to the storm

I asked similar question about angle of attack (both 737 max and AF447) - can't they just look at a glass of water to see they are at wrong angle.

But with planes it doesn't work that way - everything is relative to the air outside, not the ground. With good tailwind you still have to go with your cruising speed relative to the tailwind. Your ground speed will be insane. The opposite is with headwind.

Maybe a gyroscope + glass of water ?

No. Angle of attack behaves in some very non-obvious ways-

For example, if you maintain the same attitude, but decrease thrust so that your forward airspeed drops, and you begin descending... your angle of attack increases, despite the aircraft not actually rotating.

Why? When you start descending, the air below now seems to be "coming up at you"- you go from

  ---> (===

    7  (===
   /
  /

if that ASCII art helps at all (equals signs being the wing)

Now consider how roll, yaw, and crosswinds affect this- as the AoA becomes variable across the wing...

Doesn't work. The stall is about the angle at which the airflow meets the wing. The gyroscope (with or without glass of water) will tell you the attitude of the plane, but nothing about the direction from which the air meets the wing.

You can stall in a nose down attitude if you're descending fast, the air comes from "below" and you try to pull out ift the dive thereby increasing the angle at which the air meets the wing. All the while your nose is still pointing below the horizon.

As other comments have mentioned, a glass of water tells you nothing about the conditions outside the plane, which are the ones that matter.

But also, it is sometimes useless at telling you about the conditions inside the plane too. If you're rolling and yawing at the same time (known as a coordinated turn), the water in the glass will stay level (relative to the bottom of the glass), and the glass will not slide along its surface, even in a 20 degree bank.

But if you’re in straight and level unaccelerated flight, and the wind outside has no vertical component, the glass of water would allow you to deduce your angle of attack (namely, the angle of the water plus the angle of incidence, if I’m not mistaken).

Of course, that doesn’t help you at all during dynamic or unusual situations.

Here is a good illustration why looking at a glass of water will not work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9pvG_ZSnCc

Agree that it’s a pain when it happens (the gate delay) but Heathrow closes at night so these are some of the first flights to land so it might not be much of a problem. All the morning (evening departures) transatlantic flights I’ve been on west -> East have arrived suspiciously early too so I suspect there’s some schedule padding going on...

They schedule the flights months out. The know how fast the jet stream is going maybe a couple days out. So yes, schedule padding to make sure a weak jet stream doesn't cause people to miss connections.

There is also the question of relative airspeed. Planes need to create enough lift to stay in the air. With a large tailwind they need to go faster to keep enough air flowing over the wings thus higher ground speed to keep the same relative air speed.

This is a common misconception, but very much incorrect. I am a private pilot.

When an airplane is in a body of air which is moving across the ground, the airplane moves within that body of air with no knowledge that it is in a strong wind. Airspeed is unaffected, except for gusts or shear events. The airplane maintains it's normal airspeed within that body of air, even though that body of air is moving very quickly in relation to the ground.

This is evident in all phases of flight. For example, landing into a strong headwind does not change the approach speed required or the thrust required to obtain that approach speed. The only allowance is for gusty conditions, during which a gust will momentarily affect airspeed due to the inertia of the airplane. The heavier the airplane, the more time it takes a gust or shift to defeat the airplanes inertia.

I'm confused. Are you saying that it'll maintain its normal ground speed despite flying through fast-moving air? Or that it maintains the same air-speed?

The former doesn't make any sense, but the latter is what the GP was saying.

The ground speed will vary, but the airspeed will not be affected by wind (except momentarily for gusts or shears).

The poster I replied to was implying that due to the strong tailwind, they had to maintain an increased airspeed. That is incorrect. The airplane has no idea it is in a tailwind, and airspeed will be unchanged.

I don't think anyone other than you interpreted the comment that way.

I did. Saying “everyone” when it’s just probably one person is not usually ok. It’s fine to say if you interpreted the comment in a certain way, and ok to be the outlier. But assuming your interpretation applies to others more broadly than it does, is counterproductive.

Both comments were significantly downvoted at the time of my comment, which was what I was referring to. The original comment explicitly mentioned "relative airspeed", which I thought was pretty clear (it's the speed of the plane relative to the air that matters).

I think calling it a "common misconception" is also assuming a lot.

I teach people how to fly. Trust me when I say that this is an extremely common misconception. It's one of the concepts students have the greatest difficulty wrapping their heads around.

Do these people never use treadmills or trains?

I think the root of disagreement here is that to you, as a pilot, "speed" means airspeed. But to a layperson, "speed" means groundspeed. So saying that an airplane with a tailwind "must go faster to keep enough air going over the wings" reads very strangely to you, as (although it is technically correct) it belies a groundspeed-first type of thinking that is a poor intuition for staying alive in a plane.

> The poster I replied to was implying that due to the strong tailwind, they had to maintain an increased airspeed.

No, he wasn't. He explicitly said the opposite:

"higher ground speed to keep the same relative air speed."

I think the confusion here is stemming in part from the fact that "relative airspeed" isn't a well-defined term. In aviation airspeed means the speed of the airplane through the air (modulo specifiers for true vs. indicated vs. calibrated airspeed).

> "relative airspeed" isn't a well-defined term

The original was "relative air speed", which I would simply take as the way a person not familiar with aviation terminology would say "airspeed"--speed relative to the air.

The original comment seems to mean, that the plane has to (actively) keep a larger ground speed in high winds while the reply meant that this just naturally happens as the plane is only "aware" of its relative air speed.

The first answer is correct, but I think the misunderstanding is because it can be read as the higher ground speed being the cause for the same relative air speed. Whereas it’s technically the opposite.

This is further compounded when they say “they need to go faster”, as though the pilot needs to push the throttle harder. In actuality, the pilot doesn’t do anything differently to maintain their normal cruising speed.

The correct phrasing would have been the relative air speed and high wind speed combined, to result in a higher ground speed.

Glider pilots will add half of windspeed to their landings.

I once took a Boston -> London flight that arrived significantly early thanks to the arctic jet stream. But that meant we arrived before the landing curfew ended at 6am so the aircraft was put in a holding pattern above central London for 30 mins or so, and I flew more or less over my home in East London a few times (I could see it out the window as we flew overhead).

We landed a few minutes after 6am, and by the time I got through immigration and customs and rode home during the morning rush hour on the tube it would have been 8 or 8:30am.

Super frustrating that the last mile took 3 hours to complete!

Back in 2002 a flight I took from Boston to London arrived into LHR airspace about 45-50 mins earlier than it should have due to a decent tailwind from the jetstream. Sadly we stacked for an hour and a half and ended up arriving later than the scheduled arrival time....because fricken Heathrow bottlenecks, and we almost missed our connecting flight back to Scotland. Grrr.

Not only that, but Heathrow I understand has heavy curfew / noise fines for arriving before 6am. Maybe to the tune of several tens of thousands of GBP. I figure you would wait to takeoff just to avoid those -- but maybe equally on the departure end they're paying for occupying a gate...

https://www.heathrow.com/content/dam/heathrow/web/common/doc... "Schedule 5"

You get a few freebies every year and they’re far more accommodating for arrivals than departures since they’re much quieter.

Good question. Maybe (just speculating here) because it would be dangerous to land with too much fuel on board? Planes dump fuel for that reason when aborting shortly after takeoff, but that may only be a problem with tanks close to full.

After a transatlantic flight it's highly unlikely you'll land over your maximum landing weight. That situation usually happens only when they have to land within an hour of takeoff.

> "In the USA, if your flight is more than 20 minutes early, you are usually stuck on the tarmac waiting for a gate."

I've experienced this in the US and Canada too, but it doesn't seem to be a problem at Heathrow in my experience. LHR is slot constrained, but not gate constrained. Worst case, you end up on a remote stand with a bus ride in to the terminal.

Heathrow has a very specific restriction - no landings before 6am, due to the noise for local residents.

Correct. Noise curfews are common at European airports.

This flight landed 0443

Landings before 6am are allowed, but are limited in numbers.

For more detail: https://www.heathrow.com/company/local-community/noise/opera...

AIUI you can only save fuel by not loading it, they can't land with substantial fuel remaining onboard without damaging the airframe. They'll just circle the destination to use up the excess fuel.

200kts ground with a 250 kts tailwind is impossible. The plane would have an indicated airspeed of -50kts.

> Or are they stuck at their speed they filed in the flight plan, to keep traffic separation?

When you cross the Atlantic you're usually in sequence on a track. Slowing down one flight slows down all the flights behind it.

(Just checked and the flight in question was indeed on a track.)

And Heathrow has some sort of "AI" system for scheduling landings and take offs. Even telling pilots of aircraft exactly when they can start their engines and when to start to taxi.

It was a great documentary I think a math program it wasn't all about the Heathrow system.

This isn't the show but it seems to explain the system: https://www.nats.aero/news/nats-trialling-use-artificial-int...

That's something pretty much all airports do, just that normally the air traffic controller schedules that. With an airport the size of Heathrow and at capacity, they just use more automation to optimize for throughput and reduce fuel consumption.

In Europe, a lot of this is done by EUROCONTROL's Central Flow Management unit. They'll issue a "Calculated Take Off Time" and the ground/tower controller at the airport will get the plane to the runway at the correct time to meet the slot.

Specifically telling pilots at other airports when to start taxiing. You can have a ground delay in Cyprus because you haven’t got a slot at Heathrow.

It helps that Heathrow has an entire terminal (T5) dedicated for use by British Airways, so gates aren't as big an issue.

On a personal note, you get so little sleep on a redeye flight as it is, I'd have been a bit miffed wake up so soon!

There were extreme wind conditions on that day and the wind was expected to get worse through the day. The pilots wanted to arrive as early as possible to beat the storm.

Source: I was on a Norwegian flight at exactly the same time and the pilot explained this logic to us and also mentioned that we were on pace to break this record. Unfortunately, the pilot couldn't land in the wind conditions and we had to divert. Good thing we had that extra fuel too as the diversion was to Copenhagen which is quite far.

They probably couldn’t slow down at that altitude without stalling. The window of possible air speeds at that altitude is rather small. Further, fuel efficiency would drop off dramatically too, but I feel the major contributing part is likely the stall speed.

They actually want to be as light as possible (within reason) when they land.

They would have to fuel the flight light, which I doubt would ever happen because what if the atmospheric conditions changed on the way?

This is nothing, one time I flew from Midland to Dallas in a Cessna 172 in an hour and 20 minutes. My ground speed exceeded 180 knots at times!

The BA callsign isn't "Speedbird" for nothing. :)

> Despite travelling faster than the speed of sound the plane would not have broken the sonic barrier as it was helped along by fast-moving air.

It makes sense but that is still fascinating to me...

Well _all_ aircraft are traveling faster than the speed of sound with respect to much of the universe, but not relative to their surrounding airstreams...

Are we entering a future where plane routes are designed to follow storms ?

We already do [1]:

> They are aligned in such a way as to minimize any head winds and maximize tail winds impact on the aircraft. This results in much more efficiency by reducing fuel burn and flight time. To make such efficiencies possible, the routes are created twice daily to take account of the shifting of the winds aloft and the principal traffic flow, eastward in North America evening and westward twelve hours later.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Tracks

On that note, it seems that the amount of turbulence has been increasing over the last few decades as a consequence of global warming?

Not a record. This flight got to 717kt, but the fastest record for a 747 is 752kt: https://groundspeedrecords.com/top-3-models/?terms-filter=15...

Was that a transatlantic flight?

It's a flight time record, not a ground speed record.

So yes, a record.

> The four hours and 56 minutes flight arrived at Heathrow Airport 80 minutes ahead of schedule on Sunday morning. > According to Flightradar24, an online flight tracking service, it beat a previous five hours 13 minutes record held by Norwegian.

Extremely poor proofreading there from BBC. 4:56 hour scheduled flight when the previous record was 5:13? The numbers simply don't make any sense.

Original numbers: https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1226395432252780544...

> 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.

And average flight time is 6:10

The "ahead of schedule" refers to its conventional ETA, not the previous record.

Which also ties in nicely with your quoted 6:10 average.

ah yep, my bad. thanks.

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