When I blew the sound bar

posted in: The new country | 0

No, now it wasn’t exactly me who passed the sound barrier, I was sitting in an airplane that did it. How can it have gone to, many people ask. Today or, more precisely, at the end of 2015 there were no civil supersonic aircraft, those who had such a hurry had to use military aviation, and that is not the easiest for an old pensioner with crap bad physics. No, I would say that it is absolutely impossible, so big vomit bags are not available.

So I will now talk about how it actually went. In fact, many of you who have flown over the Atlantic probably traveled at supersonic speed without even knowing it. My trip started from Arlanda in late November 2015 and it took me away from the Swedish cold to warmer latitudes, namely to the Dominican Republic, where I came to spend four glorious months far away from crazy winter bathers and bone breaks in the Swedish mountains. The picture below is the one I want to see instead of snow and ice.

I changed plan to Air France Airbus 380 in Paris for the Atlantic crossing. Airbus 380 has a top speed of 953 km / h and the journey takes about 11 hours. For many hours, the flight went quite slowly and I was wondering if we would really arrive in time. Thought in my still mind to ask the pilots to put a little speed on the plane so we will arrive this week. The speed was only around 800 km / h and the top speed is fucking more than 950 km / h. What are they doing? Do they have some fucking cocktail party with the hostesses in the cockpit or what? It had little to do with my Las Americas forwarding. If we arrived a lot too late, I missed my further transport to Boca Chica that day.

Klicka på bilden för större bild.

When I sit there in my thoughts I suddenly see on the data display before me that things have started to happen, The speed has slowly begun to increase and is already up in more than the plane’s top speed. Good that it starts to move. He who shovels coal to the boiler has apparently woken up and scooped coal out of full range, or the cocktail party is over and the hostesses have returned to their regular jobs.

Klicka på bilden för större bild.

I now keep an eye on the display and see the speed increase more and more and when the speed approaches the sound speed which is just over 1200 km /h then I started to get a little nervous and begun to think that the cocktail party might have switched to a more intense party in the cockpit, the speed had gradually increased from 800 km / h to 1133 km / h in a machine whose top speed is 953 km / h.

I wave to a steward and show him the data display and ask him if this is really ok. He assures me that there are no problems, but that for my sake he should check with the pilots. Nothing happened until after about 5 minutes, when the passengers were suddenly notified by the captain, everyone should put on the safety belts. The plane’s speed then dropped rapidly to around 1000 km / h. Later I have found that the sound speed of 10,000 meters height is about 1070 km / h, so that means that we actually traveled faster than the sound for a little while.

Ok, how do you explain what happened? The speed shown on the display is speed above ground and not speed relative to ambient air. The plane was in a strong tailwind so in fact the plane did not move inside its tailwind more than the plane’s top speed, But viewed from the ground, it went into supersonic speed and it is enough for me. I have actually traveled faster than the sound without having to use a single vomit bag. Thanks to the hard wind, we arrived in time and I was able to experience the first morning sun without snow for a long time.

Boca Chica one morning in November 2015

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