Simviation Forums

just curious as to which civil airliner is the fastest.

The Boeing 747...... I can't remember the speed but I'm sure someone will provide it.

The Boeing 747-400 is the fastest airliner with a long-range cruise speed of 490kts and a max cruise speed of 507kts.

I heard on a documentary that the 747 has broken mach 1 in tests.  Maybe someone out there can verify this.

Jim

[quote]I heard on a documentary that the 747 has broken mach 1 in tests.

wow, I wonder if they could give it bigger engines, and cruise at mach 1?

No.
Not aerodynamically designed to go mach 1. its only possible in a dive, and doesnt exactly do the airframe any good.

No.
Not aerodynamically designed to go mach 1. its only possible in a dive, and doesnt exactly do the airframe any good.

..or the worlds oil reserves...

The parasite drag will greatly increase when the aircrafts exceeds mach1.
The rather blunt nose of the 744 will lead to energy consuming bow shocks (=drag), which are a combo of a normal and oblique shock waves, not to mention the high cambered wings (shockwaves again) and relative low sweep angle (compared to the concorde) which are ill-suited for supersonic flight.

A normal subsonic wing has the centre of lift about one foirth chord line back from the leading edge, which basicly means the wing produces 50% of the lift by that point. As the wing approaches mach 1, the centre of lift moves farther back. So we need more speed to make up for the lack of lift, but the Mach drag rise will prevent the 744 to go supersonic in level flight.

Ive heard a China Airline's 747 went mach 1 once.  Im not sure if it actually went THAT fast, but apparently, they were flying to california across the ocean, during descent, the pilots forgot to disengage the autopilot, the thing stalled, dove, oversped big time, and the pilots pulled like 7 G's out of it to recover .  They got it on the ground with an extremely bent airplane, bloody ears, and a bunch of passengers who probably want their money back.    I just got the story from one of my teachers so i cant say the facts...  ;D

Anybody know the ultimate load factor on the 744?
7 g's sounds ridiculously much, but then again I'm not an engineer  ;D

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_i ... 5672&key=1
guessing thats the incident.

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/162693/M/
thats the plane.

Is it just the wide angle lense, or is that 747 shorter than normal?

Yeah the lense screws up the angle, but that particular 747 is the SP (stands for Special Performance I believe) version, which is considerably shorter than its siblings