Introduction
We had seen the fastest military aircraft in one of my previous articles and the insane speeds that they could achieve; was fun I hope. Anyway, now we move on to the next segment which is the commercial passenger aircraft. This is a segment we would be conversant or most would be conversant with as we are the ones utilizing the services of this segment of aircraft. But do we really know the “Who’s Who” of this world? More importantly, do we know the fastest of them all? No? So read on to find out.
Fastest: Concorde
This is the fastest passenger aircraft in the world and could actually go supersonic. It is a flight worth taking if you can shell out nearly four hundred times your normal flight ticket. Fancy that?
Okay, let me be honest, even if you have the money, you may not be able to take the flight, as it was discontinued in 2003. Many believe that the flight was grounded because of the disastrous accident of a Concorde in 2001; however, the fact is that it was grounded in 2003 because of a rise in operational and maintenance cost. There are talks in various quarters of a revival and if that happens, this would be one cool supersonic flight to take! Talking of supersonic, the Concorde could do a maximum of Mach 2.2 without breaking a sweat!
Second Fastest: Tupolev Tu- 144
Now here is an aircraft which will be considered as a second fiddle, less than a good copy of the Concorde. The word copy itself is unkind to the Tupolev and the other adjectives only add insult to injury. That said, being the good people that we are we will remain focused on the objective of the article.
The Tupolev was the second fastest and in fact, the first to become supersonic passenger flight in the world! It could do a maximum of Mach 2.02 – 2.04.
P.S. : Just for fun - do you see the similarity between the Tu and Concorde?
Third Fastest: Convair 990
Both of the known supersonic aircraft are not operational anymore and hence our list hereon becomes sub-sonic; just the list, not our imagination!!
The Convair 990 was manufactured to take on competition of that time with modifications over the Convair 880 (which we will see shortly). In doing so, it became larger than the Convair 880 and faster too. Till the Convair 990, the 880 was the fastest subsonic aircraft in the world. The 990 could do a Mach 0.97.
Fourth Fastest: Convair 880
This is the original aircraft on which the Convair 990 was based. The 880 was built to serve a niche segment which did not really work out for the manufacturer, so to do better, they had to get into designing the 990 pretty soon. Though, before the 990, the record holder 880, could do a Mach 0.92.
Fifth Fastest: Boeing 747 – 8 Intercontinental
The list now enters familiar territory. The other aircraft so far are history and this is the first operational aircraft, as of today. The 747 is the fastest of the aircraft taking to the skies and can do a Mach 0.86. It’s a design improvement over 747 – 400 which itself was a scorcher by passenger aircraft standards.
So that’s the top five. A more detailed list is created by me and can be read here:
https://hubpages.com/education/Fastest-Commercial-Passenger-Aircraft-in-the-World
In case you would like to compare the speeds with that of the military aircraft, you can read the same here:
https://steemit.com/technology/@oivas/fastest-military-aircraft-in-the-world
Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons