my flight got delayed but the pilot said they would go faster to make up for lost time and we ended up arriving early. This got me thinking why can’t planes always go at this faster speed?
In: 7
There are lots of possibilities on how, depending on the route, and the airline.
If it’s trans Atlantic for example, a strong tailwind can make a +/- an hour difference.
The pilot may be able to go faster than is optimum, burning more fuel and costing more, but catching up time. This might actually be offset by fees at the re landing at, if they arrive out of sequence it can be costly to the airline.
Or it could just be down to utter fuckery from the likes of Ryan Air advertising longer flight durations than it actually takes so they can claim to always be on time or early, and that 10 minute delay just gets swallowed up in the time buffer.
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