How fast do southwest planes go

The more bank angle you have, the higher the stall speed, the more speed you require to fly safely. In that sense, a tighter but higher speed turn may only offer the same 1. Finally, when flying IFR Instrument Flight Rules , you are taught to fly "standard" turns, and these are generally at low bank angles, in order to maintain the precision of your turn.

Hope this explains some! Raphael, I have had some other memorable experiences flying between the States and Europe. Seeing ice bergs in the North Atlantic, the ice cap in Greenland, and flying right down the middle of Lake Michigan. One of the most memorable was landing at London Heathrow and flying along the Thames over central London and seeing the Tower Bridge, St. Paul's, the Houses of Parliament, and Buckingham Palace. Jim, the R and L stand for left and right when you have two parallel runways.

I actually was turned around when I was writing about taking off in El Paso. We took off on Runway 8 Right, which is the opposited end of Runway 26 Left. The R and L designations are in relation to your looking straight down the runway. In the case of 8R, you are looking almost due East and it is the runway on the right.

By the way, if you have three parallel runways like Detroit used to have, the middle one is designated C for Center. Blog Boy Brian. Brian, you need to come and visit! Another great flight was on a BAe from Brimingham to Paris, and coming into Paris, the Captain advised us that we would be required to hold, as Concorde was coming in and they had priority as they were always low on fuel.

As we were stacking, Concorde overtook us on the right, same altitude and about a mile away at the most! A fantastic sight! Those were the days as they say! Raphael, I so miss Concorde. I was fortunate enough to fly it twice between London and New York, and I can't think of a more beautiful airliner ever.

Of course, a takeoff in Concorde was nothing like any other airliner with the afterburners on the four engines pressing you into your seat.

Ray, that really was a case of "go fast, pull up. I worked for a month at Orly when I was with Delta, and it was an amazing time. Of course, every aviation buff must make two pilgrimages in life. One is to Le Bourget not just for the Art Deco Terminal and the Musee de l'Air, but to imagine what it was like when Lindbergh touched down after his epic trip--one of the 20th Century's truly transforming moments.

The other is to visit Kitty Hawk to see where it all began. Kitty Hawk is still on my "to do" list. Brian, you are so lucky! I only ever flew concorde once, on one of those outings when they took people up to go supersonic over the med and north africa - apparently they didn't use to complain about the sonic boom!

Flying London to NY must've been great! There are so many good stories associated with the aircraft as well! Although Southwest have also got a fair share of stories! Although we'd quite like to welcome you down south as well! Jim, To piggyback on Brian's explanation about "L" and "R", you didn't ask, but I'll tell you a bit about the runway numbering system.

If you think about looking straight down at an airport from overhead as in the Google Earth view that you mentioned , then imagine superimposing a compass dial over that view. The due north direction would be labeled to represent the "top" of a degree circle. Due south would be , or halfway around from the top of the circle. Inbetween, looking to the east would be 90 and to the west would be Aren't you glad that you stayed awake during geometry now?

The runway numbering system drops the last zero, and then labels that concrete strip based on the direction you'd be flying if you landed on it. If the landing approach was from the south, flying northbound, you would call that runway "36" because you'd be heading towards on the compass dial. If you came from the other direction, going south as you landed, that same runway would be referred to as "18".

However, not many airports have runways that perfectly align to the four 'corners' of the compass. The numbers will always deviate from and by the same amount; 13 actually degrees is fifty degrees to the southeast of true south and the 31 direction is shifted fifty degrees to the northwest of true north When you approach DAL from the north, landing into a southerly headwind, you'd see two runways in front of you.

For a long time now, I've never landed at Love Field without remembering an incident that happened to me years ago but has been indelibly etched into my memory. I was riding in the cockpit of my former employer's jet, chatting with our pilots, listening to the aviation radio traffic and enjoying the view. The Love Field approach controllers directed us to land on 31L as we came in from the south. At DAL, commercial traffic, like Southwest's planes, is usually routed to 31L because it is the longer runway and is closer to the SWA side of the terminal, thereby shortening the taxiing time.

Our pilot radioed back to confirm a destination of 31L, but also asked if it would be possible to use 31R. All three of us heard in our headsets when the reply was in the negative, that we were to use 31L. Since pilots normally don't argue or debate with controllers, we accepted that assignment, knowing that we'd have further to taxi, but it wasn't a big deal overall.

As we passed over downtown Dallas, now only about 30 - 45 seconds from touchdown, the radio came alive with a frantic voice telling us we were lined up on the WRONG runway. The man in our headsets was telling us that he had said 31R and we had messed up. Our pilot reconfirmed 31R and he just veered to our right to re-align to the east side of the airport, without any compromise to safety or violent movements. In fact, he did it gently enough that our pax never realized that we had "scooted over", but the three of us all knew who had made the mistake.

Blog Boy Brian - Eureka! The light bulb went off, R and L - and 8 and 26 - now make sense. One more tiny clarification. When the flight departs from or lands on runway 8R, the plane is pointed east - correct? If the plane is facing west, it is landing on or departing from runway 26L. In my simple mind, runway 26L and 8R were just one runway. But even though it is only one stretch of concrete - one physical runway - it is actually two separate by designation runways.

Ergo - it is impossible to depart pointing west on runway 8R, and impossible to depart pointing east from runway 26R. I wonder if I can drop a photo of El Paso's runways in here? The small runway is just three feet higher.

And thank you to all, it's pretty cool when perfect strangers take the time and effort to help other perfect strangers who just don't understand something. You might say, "Oh, that's just the SWA attitude", but it's a little more, and it is appreciated. Jim, You have it right, and as Kim explains, runways are numbered by the direction they point. It's not unusual for runways to vary in altitude along their length, after all, some are two miles long. You mentioned Atlanta, and the runways there have a pronounced dip in the middle.

Also Atlanta illustrates what happens when you have more than three parallel runways. For the fourth runway, Right, Left, and Center are gone, so what do you do? Keep in mind that runway number isn't an exact representation of heading.

Runway 8 may well point degrees, and since we only use two digits, the last one is eliminated. In ATL they named the two runways north of the terminal 8L and 8R, and two of the runways to the south 9R and 9L even though all four point the same direction. Runway 10 is a newer runway more to the south and it may have a slightly different direction. Incidentally, while runways have numbers, taxiways have letters that are pronounced phonetically. In most places, taxiway "B" is "taxiway Bravo," and "D" is taxiway Delta.

In ATL because Delta has almost 1, daily flights, they call it taxiway Dixie to avoid confusion in radio transmissions to all the Delta flights. This stuff fascinates me. By the way Jim, did you get my e-mails? Hi Jim, You have got it! The Instrument Landing System guides you right into the upslope, and when performing automatic landings known as category III landings - with an automated flare at a set descent rate , you hit the bump in a rather sharp and uncomfortable way.

Pilots prefer to finish the approach off manually whenever they have the visibility to do so! As the magnetic north does not correspond to true geographic north, there can sometimes be a deviation of up to 20 degrees or more in some parts of the american continent.

The aircraft also featured a modified cockpit that incorporated avionics systems and instrumentation which included a more sophisticated autoflight system.

Special VIP conversions of the aircraft layout were developed to be used as head-of-state transport by 14 countries. The ILM has a cruise speed of Mach 0. It also features simple, light single-slotted flaps and incremental aerodynamic improvements over its predecessor models.

Most notable of these improvements is the addition of spoilerons wing-mounted air brakes and the ability to use idle reverse thrust in flight to shorten the landing run required for the aircraft. First introduced in June , the fifth fastest passenger plane on our list is the long-range, wide-body, twin-engine Boeing It has a maximum capacity of passengers and completes long-haul flights with ease.

The Boeing has a cruise speed of Mach 0. The is the most-produced Boeing wide-body jet, surpassing the Boeing As of January, this year, about 60 customers had placed orders for 2, aircraft of all variants, with 1, aircraft already delivered since commercial service of the jet began with United Airlines in The also has the honor of being the first commercial aircraft to be designed entirely by computer.

The system was groundbreaking in that it allowed engineers to assemble a virtual aircraft, in simulation. Being able to check for interference and ensure that the thousands of parts fit properly, substantially reduced costly rework on the plane. In joint third place are airliner rivals Boeing and Airbus. Introduced in October , the Boeing Dreamliner is a mid-size, long-haul twin-engine airliner that can seat a maximum of passengers and has a cruising speed of Mach 0.

Window dimensions are The European manufactured Airbus A is the largest passenger plane in the world, with a maximum capacity of passengers. Production of the A peaked in at 30 aircraft a year, but Airbus now believes that their investment in the development of the jet will never be recouped. Production of the last Airbus A is intended for Where airlines fly can make a big difference in the ranking.

Helping it run consistently fast, three quarters of its domestic flights are short hops among the Hawaiian islands, where the weather is usually gentle.

Alaska Airlines suffers the biggest knock, falling to tenth among the ten major U. Its average flight in was San Francisco sees frequent inbound delays due to a layer of clouds that flows in off the ocean in the morning and sits over the arrival path at 2, to 3, feet, while Seattle has gotten more congested due to expanded service by Alaska and Delta. Senate Joint Economic Committee. The chart below melds that figure with efficiency index minutes to estimate the costs at an airline and passenger level—see the methodology for an explanation.

A big contributor to those flight delays is the failure to effectively manage the flow of planes arriving at airports, says Lonnie Bowlin, president of Dunkirk, Maryland-based AERA. In addition, military aircraft, private jets, and other types of aircraft may have speeds that are higher or lower.

Big commercial airplanes generally fly in the MPH range, but their landing and taking-off speeds are naturally going to be different. As a general rule, airspeed is measured according to the velocity of the plane as it flies through the air.

Wind resistance can affect that speed more than anything else, and if takeoff and landing speeds vary it is due to overall weight capacity or runway length, among other factors. They publish these sheets for every make and model of aircraft in use today and are therefore a great way to get this type of information. If you love speed, private jets are the way to go.