You spend a lot of time climbing and descending plus the higher you are, the more distance you cover traveling to any location. The trick is to fly as close as possible to the ground.
Air is denser the lower you are in the atmosphere so a plane’s cruise speed is actually a lot lower at 1000 feet than at 30,000 feet.
So the optimal altitude to climb to and fly at most of the flight for shortest possible flight time depends on distance (since it’s a balance between climb time, descent time and speed at the cruise altitude) as well as on the direction of the wind at the cruise altitude since a tail wind will actually help getting there faster (so a choice of a lower cruise altitude might yield a better time because the wind is in the right direction there even though the air is a bit denser lower down).
This is of course all theoretical since commercial planes don’t get much choice in terms of the cruise altitude for their flight.
In before someone posts the Aspen 20 Speedcheck copypasta
Party pooper here.
You know when fast food workers post images of things like stepping bare footed onto a bowl of salad?
To me, this is the equivalent for pilots. Safety, checklists and routines, take time. Don’t go posting on social media that your are competing in this space.
Ps: the post in question is arguably not too bad. But, if this is “a thing”, then I’d suggest to be careful to be associated with it.
Safety, checklists and routines, take time.
Walkarounds and such are done before takeoff, and you aren’t taking off early, especially not in an airliner. In-flight checklists don’t take more or less time, since the airliner is going whether you want it or not, and the pilot does not / can not just set the throttle for a faster speed. It’s fine.
There are two major factors influencing travel time on an airliner, neither of them have anything to do with doing stuff faster with less attention to safety. They are airport organisation and prevailing winds.
If your departure/destination is competent and there are less complications from overworked ATC or other planes being late on arrival/departure, you’re most likely fine.
The big thing though is wind. A head/tailwind can affect your ground speed to a degree of +/- 30% in extreme cases, so these are harmless. It’s not even up to the pilot “going faster”. There are similar posts and even articles about airliners “breaking the sound barrier”, eg. having a larger ground speed than the speed of sound in static air on the ground.
I mean, the pilot can literally set the throttle for more speed? Isn’t that the whole function of it? “Engine go more/less brrr?”
(I am aware of autothrottle and all that, but iirc pilots still have a lot of leeway regarding economy/speed/…)
I’m no aerospace doctor or nothin, but I’d think the pilot would be expected to stay on a very strict schedule. If they arrived at the intended airport minutes ahead of schedule they might have trouble landing when another scheduled flight is trying to land or have to awkwardly circle the runway until there is clearance.
I’m sure the airlines want those throttles set to the most fuel efficient setting that gets the plane there safely and on time. Fuel is expensive.
As the other response noted, arriving early can lead to headaches, but for other reasons - for example, slots at the gates are timed, so arriving before the previous plane departs won’t work well. Of course this doesn’t always apply, sometimes the gate is just sitting empty already.
Also, airlines have padded their schedules for years to give themselves some leeway in case of unexpected delays in taking off, landing, minor issues with the plane, etc. I assume this is a relatively small amount, like 5 or 10 minutes, but I really don’t know. But it does mean the flight will show up early frequently when things are normal.
They do. And it can end like this.
Block time (airlines calculate it differently) was traditionally viewed from “block to block”, the time the wheel chocks were removed for the aircraft to move under its own power for departure to the time the wheel chocks were put back under the wheels at destination. Now it just means what the airline thinks the flight time will be for scheduling purposes.
As a passenger, this is what you see when your app tells you the flight time. It includes taxi out and taxi in.
Delay-prone flights are often over blocked, so a perfectly delay-free flight (push, taxi, takeoff, fly, land, taxi in, park) that takes say an hour and a half total might me blocked for 1:50 because historically one of the airports might be busy at that time an they know there will be a long taxi, gate holds, whatever.
So sometimes fate smiles on everyone and you get to leave early, miss whatever built in delays there might be planned, ATC gives you a couple shortcuts, a favorable wind, and bam, you’re in 30 minutes early.
So not really a speed run, just lots of luck.
