# Did jet airliners fly faster in the past? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 5, 2018, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629 "2018-05-05T06:01:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2018, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/21 "2018-05-08T05:33:06Z")
I had always thought that flying at higher altitudes was both a fuel saver and a time saver, but perhaps I’m wrong. I recently flew from PHX to LAX and although we took off a little late, we landed a half hour early. The pilot mentioned at the beginning of the flight that we’d have to fly at 26,000 feet due to weather, and the PHX-LAX flight is certainly long enough to get into higher altitudes. And then I waited 45 minutes for my checked bag to come out :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2018, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/22 "2018-05-08T16:10:12Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > I had always thought that flying at higher altitudes was both a fuel saver and a time saver, but perhaps I’m wrong. I recently flew from PHX to LAX and although we took off a little late, we landed a half hour early. The pilot mentioned at the beginning of the flight that we’d have to fly at 26,000 feet due to weather, and the PHX-LAX flight is certainly long enough to get into higher altitudes. > > And then I waited 45 minutes for my checked bag to come out :smack: PHX-LAX is a funny one. It’s only about an hour flight, so if you got in a half hour early, they certainly padded the arrival time. The pilot pretty much doesn’t even have to turn the plane. Take off west, flight straight, land plane. On one flight we must have been very early, because the pilot made a huge 360 degree turn in the middle of the desert. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2018, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/23 "2018-05-10T08:51:37Z")
> [@sbunny8](#): > > I > > According to [this article](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travel-truths/Are-airlines-exaggerating-flight-times-so-theyre-never-late/), airlines schedules have gotten more and more pessimistic in the last two decades, in order to artificially inflate their On-Time Performance. But the airlines deny it. They say the schedules are based on past performance. But logically, if you’ve been intentionally flying the plane slower to save fuel and then you base your schedule on that history, then it amounts to the same thing. You’re scheduling the flights based on the assumption that you will probably fly slower to save fuel, just like you always do. But if you’re delayed, you can “make up some time in the air”. Now that you mention this, I think fuller load factors also play a role here, since they make it harder to reroute passengers who miss connections due to a late arrival. So it’s more practical to have “slow” schedules. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2018, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/24 "2018-05-10T22:24:26Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > Now that you mention this, I think fuller load factors also play a role here, since they make it harder to reroute passengers who miss connections due to a late arrival. So it’s more practical to have “slow” schedules. An even bigger reason for this is the airlines adoption of the hub-and-spokes routing system, which saves money for the airline, but results in a lot more passengers who have to change planes in their travel. ---
**Author:** ![MonkeyMensch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@MonkeyMensch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MonkeyMensch)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/25 "2018-05-11T04:38:14Z")
I grew up just up the hill from Convair’s plant and two of their early generation airliner types were the 880 and the 990. Those refer to Mach numbers and I just did some envelope scribbling and it sure looks like .99 Mach is faster than most of, at least Boeing’s, current batch fly at. It’s been pointed out several times and very clearly already that there are a number of other considerations that airlines are taking into account these days. The 990 , to fly that fast, had interesting anti-shock bodies on the wing’s upper surfaces to decrease trans-sonic wave drag. Great aircraft. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/26 "2018-05-11T10:02:08Z")
Very good video and summary of this very issue. It even starts with timetables from 1967. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/n1QEj09Pe6k/maxresdefault.jpg "Why Planes Don't Fly Faster") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1QEj09Pe6k) ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2018, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/27 "2018-05-14T19:36:08Z")
> [@MonkeyMensch](#): > > I grew up just up the hill from Convair’s plant and two of their early generation airliner types were the 880 and the 990. Those refer to Mach numbers and I just did some envelope scribbling and it sure looks like .99 Mach is faster than most of, at least Boeing’s, current batch fly at. It’s been pointed out several times and very clearly already that there are a number of other considerations that airlines are taking into account these days. The 990 , to fly that fast, had interesting anti-shock bodies on the wing’s upper surfaces to decrease trans-sonic wave drag. Great aircraft. Interesting that the Convair jetliners never really–hah!–took off. Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![MonkeyMensch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@MonkeyMensch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MonkeyMensch)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2018, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/28 "2018-05-14T21:42:39Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > Interesting that the Convair jetliners never really–hah!–took off. > > Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk They well could be seen as the practical example to other manufacturers that incremental speed increases and decreased capacity weren’t the wave of the future. ---
**Author:** ![Capn\_Carl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/838e76/32.png) [@Capn\_Carl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capn_Carl)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2018, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/29 "2018-05-15T01:30:23Z")
> [@MonkeyMensch](#): > > I grew up just up the hill from Convair’s plant and two of their early generation airliner types were the 880 and the 990. Those refer to Mach numbers and I just did some envelope scribbling and it sure looks like .99 Mach is faster than most of, at least Boeing’s, current batch fly at. It’s been pointed out several times and very clearly already that there are a number of other considerations that airlines are taking into account these days. The 990 , to fly that fast, had interesting anti-shock bodies on the wing’s upper surfaces to decrease trans-sonic wave drag. Great aircraft. I knew of the 880 (the first airplane I flew in), but not the very impressive 990. Cool. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2018, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/30 "2018-05-15T05:20:53Z")
[quote=“Charlie\_Tan, post:26, topic:813629”] Very good video and summary of this very issue. It even starts with timetables from 1967. [/QUOTE] Alaska Airlines still offers a downloadable timetable which runs to about 540 pages, surpringly. I think that may include Virgin America’s flight since they recently merged. Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![MikeF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MikeF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeF)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2018, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/31 "2018-05-15T19:38:20Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > PHX-LAX is a funny one. It’s only about an hour flight, so if you got in a half hour early, they certainly padded the arrival time. The pilot pretty much doesn’t even have to turn the plane. Take off west, flight straight, land plane. On one flight we must have been very early, because the pilot made a huge 360 degree turn in the middle of the desert. :eek:An hour flight! Holy smokes! Where do I get a ticket? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Timz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Timz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Timz)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2025, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/32 "2025-07-16T18:49:40Z")
“Or was the 600 mph figure in the early promos a sort of ideal or record speed which the airlines rarely or never have attained in their day-to-day operations?” You guessed it. When American started flying 707s NY to Los Angeles in January 1959, they hoped to make it nonstop on maybe 90% of the trips. That’s at an economical cruising speed, 550 mph or less. The 707-123 might have been able to do 600 mph, but the fuel burn would rule out a nonstop westward flight. When fanjets appeared in 1961, the airlines could afford to speed up a bit. Mach 0.85 instead of Mach 0.82, let’s say. But no airline ever regularly cruised at 600 mph airspeed. ---
**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2025, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/33 "2025-07-16T23:44:25Z")
Old thread, but I’ll point out a factoid I think is interesting… The average speed of airliners went DOWN with the retirement of the Concorde. Of course, its contribution was just a blip by comparison. But as was pointed out, airline operations are all about efficiency. IIRC, Southwest used to give bonuses of some kind to crews for every minute they saved. It doesn’t sound like much, but multiply saving one or two minutes over hundreds of flights a day for a year and it adds up to a lot of fuel. The bizjets in my world are generally optimized around the same speeds as airliners, but some regularly cruise faster. I started in Lear 60s, which are optimized for about mach .85, but they can also climb like a motherf\*\*er. Once we were dropping off passengers in Florida and planned to airline home - we ended up racing our own airliner there which took off from Newark (we from Teterboro). We slowly but surely pulled away from them and landed about 30 minutes earlier. All that to say, economy is good for bizjets too, but the very nature of that business means you’re using a lot of fuel to fly just a handful of people, which makes it incredibly costly in the aggregate. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/34 "2025-07-17T23:29:08Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Also, since a departure officially occurs when the door is closed, they have an incentive to do so on time and turn away late-arriving passengers, even if the plane is going to have to just sit there for awhile for some reason. Maybe this os an odd way of thinking about the issue, but as a passenger, why would I care about whether the departure is on time? I want the arrival to be on time, for obvious reasons, and might even choose which airline to fly based on their record of on-time arrivals. But it’s slightly in my interest for their departures to be late. If I’m running late to catch my plane, I want to be on an airline that leaves a little behind schedule, just in case I’m the guy who’s rushing to get there before the door closes ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2025, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/35 "2025-07-17T23:50:45Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > Maybe this os an odd way of thinking about the issue, but as a passenger, why would I care about whether the departure is on time? Directly, you probably don’t. But, I would suspect that there’s a reasonably strong correlation between a flight leaving on time, and arriving on time, which is the thing that you, and the airline, really want. Also, at least at a busy airport, there may be the aspect of a flight which departs from the gate late losing its place in the departure schedule, making it even later. ---
**Author:** ![MacDoc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/macdoc/32/18696_2.png) [@MacDoc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacDoc)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2025, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/36 "2025-07-18T00:23:40Z")
When Airforce One was flying Bush around on 9/11 it was flying at .97 Mach and the fighter escort had to juggle using after burners to keep up and then not having enough fuel. Great book BTW [![](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61WaoooqkJL._SY522_.jpg) ](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61WaoooqkJL._SY522_.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2025, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/37 "2025-07-18T02:18:22Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > Directly, you probably don’t. But, I would suspect that there’s a reasonably strong correlation between a flight leaving on time, and arriving on time, which is the thing that you, and the airline, really want. Agreed, but since the on-time arrival is available directly, there isn’t much value in looking at data that just correlates with it. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2025, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/38 "2025-07-18T02:21:21Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > Agreed, but since the on-time arrival is available directly, there isn’t much value in looking at data that just correlates with it. I don’t disagree; my point is that the reason that the airlines care about leaving on time is that leaving late makes it harder to arrive on time – which is what they, and you, really care about. Unless you’re trying to make a connecting flight, or have a meeting to get to as soon as you land, if your flight is 20 or 30 minutes late, it’s probably not a big deal to most travelers. But, as the “on-time arrival” numbers are based on the flight arriving at the gate no later than 15 minutes after the scheduled arrival time, even 16 minutes late is a big deal to the airline. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2025, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/39 "2025-07-18T02:30:32Z")
If I was running an airline, I’d want to know as much about the operations as possible. If most of my flights are leaving on time, and arriving late, I need to focus on improving what happens after the door closes. For passengers, I doubt they give it much thought beyond “on time is good”. I never really questioned it until reading this thread. I need to plan around my arrrival time, but anything leading to that is kinda irrelevant. ---
**Author:** ![EnolaStraight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/41988e/32.png) [@EnolaStraight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EnolaStraight)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2025, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629/40 "2025-07-18T16:48:58Z")
Since I didn’t see it linked…the Convair 990A Coronado. [The World’s Fastest Subsonic Airliner: The Convair 990A Coronado](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHw3nRjj5xc) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-jet-airliners-fly-faster-in-the-past/813629.md?page=3)