While preparing for this afternoon’s Luton flight I noticed on the Significant Weather chart that strong north-easterly winds were blowing at high altitudes almost everywhere over Europe. Added to this, the weathermen were forecasting severe turbulence too. During an extra thorough briefing we went through all the options and even considered flying the complete route at Flight Level 200 where things appeared to be more manageable.
There was some shaking and buffeting after take-off and we encountered a lot of icing too but both disappeared once we reached our cruising level and the flight progressed normally.
Flying over Germany we noted that the wind had picked up considerably, at places it was reaching 130 knots. This was a headwind slightly off the nose and we thought about how big a help this will be on the return trip, assuming of course that it does not change speed or direction significantly. Calculating swiftly we concluded that it should be possible to break both our individual speed records! Our calculations showed that for 1000 km/hour we would need a ground speed of 539 knots and to reach the speed of sound, we would need 575 knots (taking the air temperature into account).
Luton greeted us with strong winds and a lot of turbulence but we made a smooth landing as called for by the comfort of the passengers. During the approach at times we had to use full control surface deflection, something that is extremely rare on an Airbus aircraft.
After a quick turnaround, we were back in the air again and could admire the sight of sunset as we motored along for several minutes on the top of the cloud layer at Flight Level 70. We passed Brussels, Liege, Frankfurt and Nurnberg swiftly and soon the Czech border was coming up, marked by Karlovy Vary. The wind was still very strong but unfortunately it came from about 30 degrees off the side from the left… this gave us a ground speed of only 529 knots, a bit on the slow side.
What if we changed course a bit? A logical question in the circumstances. Since Joseph is one of those people who dare to dream, he grabbed the mike and called Prague Radar.
– Prague this is Wingair 2101, we have a request.
– Go ahead Wingair 2101.
– Wingair 2101 if it is not a problem for you, request heading 140 for the next two minutes.
This meant a 30 degree turn to the right.
– Wingair 2101 heading 140 is approved… aaaah… what is the reason?
– We would like to break the speed record, Wingair 2101.
Since there was no opposition, we turned right, setting Mach 0.81 as the speed (this is the maximum for the aircraft type concerned). We then sat back and waited for the results.
We had picked an extremely fortuitous moment: wind speed suddenly increased from 141 knots to 153. We were accelerating at an incredible rate. We reached 539 knots in no time at all and on reaching 575 knots we were happy to note that our groundspeed was now higher than the speed of sound. This was a wonderful, elevating moment! But this was not the top yet!
In a few seconds our speed indicator was showing 600 knots and this rose ultimately to 604! This is equivalent to 1118.6 km/hour. A fantastic feeling even if we could not see anything on the ground. Around us only the stars kept vigil as they reached down to the horizon in all directions. They were watching our effort with silent approval.
-Wingair 2101 after finished anytime direct MAREG – said the controller, breaking the spell. Not wanting to abuse their welcome, we turned back to our original course and watched our ground speed drop immediately below 520 knots.
After an uneventful landing and once off the plane we opened a – properly purchased – bottle of wine and drank with the crew to celebrate the fact that we had become, even if only for a short time, supersonic pilots.