A New Commercial Aircraft Speed Record: British Airways Flight Crosses Atlantic In Less Than 5 hours

For the first time in years, a commercial passenger plane has flown across the Atlantic in less than five hours. A British Airways flight landed early Sunday morning at Heathrow Airport in London after leaving John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York just four hours and 56 minutes earlier.

That set a new speed record for subsonic or slower than the speed of sound commercial aircraft to fly between the two cities, according to Flightradar24, which tracks global flights.

The previous record was held by a Norwegian Air flight, which flew between the two cities with a flight time of five hours and 13 minutes.

The flight had been expected to take 102 minutes longer. The recent average flight time between New York and London is 6 hours and 13 minutes, according to Flightradar24.