A British Airways jet is thought to have made the fastest subsonic flight from New York to London thanks to Storm Ciara.

As Ciara's high winds blew into Britain on Sunday morning, the pilot managed to shave an improbable 102 minutes off its scheduled flight time.

The Boeing 747-436 was due to land at London's Heathrow Airport at 6.25am but arrived at 4.43am, having completed the 3,500-mile transatlantic journey in just four hours and 56 minutes.

Storm Ciara batters the UK

It wasn't the only flight to benefit from unusual tailwinds, according to flight tracking website Flightradar24, which revealed it was only one minute faster than a Virgin Atlantic flight which was due to land around the same time.

The Virgin Airbus A350-1041 made the same flight in four hours and 57 minutes.


BA said in a statement: "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."

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The airline regained the subsonic record from Norwegian, whose Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner flew from New York to London Gatwick in five hours and 13 minutes in 2018.

The quickest transatlantic passenger flight was set by Concorde in 1996 - which flew at more than twice the speed of sound for a journey of two hours and 52 minutes.