Fast time: Storm helps British Airways jet break subsonic mark from New York to London

The Boeing 747-436 jet took off from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and was scheduled to land at Heathrow in London at 6:25 a.m., ITV reported. Instead, the jet arrived at 4::43 a.m. -- 102 minutes before its scheduled landing, the network reported.

Flightradar24 announced the news of the fast flight on Twitter, writing: "If we're not mistaken, BA now retakes the fastest subsonic NY-London crossing from Norwegian."

Flightrader24 added the British Airways flight was one minute faster than a Virgin Airbus A350 flight; another Virgin plane landed in four hours and 59 minutes.

All three planes topped the previous speed of five hours and 13 minutes, held by Norwegian since January 2019, CNN reported. That Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner flew from New York to Gatwick, ITV reported.

In a statement, British Airways said, “We always prioritize safety over speed records, but our highly trained pilots made the most of the conditions to get customers back to London well ahead of time.”

Storm Ciara made landfall in the United Kingdom this weekend, CNN reported. The storm caused severe delays as hundreds of flights were grounded.

The jet stream, impacted by Ciara, reached speeds of 260 mph Sunday morning, according to the BBC. Despite traveling faster than the speed of sound, the British Airways flight would not have broken the sound barrier because it was aided by the fast-moving air, the BBC reported.

The quickest transatlantic passenger flight was set by Concorde in 1996 – which flew at more than twice the speed of sound -- in two hours and 52 minutes, according to ITV.