A commercial airliner cruises at a speed that has barely changed in fifty years, for reasons that are mostly about fuel economics rather than engineering limits.
The short answer
Most commercial jets cruise at roughly 800 to 950 km/h (500 to 590 mph), or about 450–510 knots. That is around Mach 0.78 to 0.85 : roughly 80% of the speed of sound at cruising altitude.
Typical cruising speeds
- Boeing 737 family : about 840 km/h (Mach 0.78)
- Airbus A320 family : about 830 km/h (Mach 0.78)
- Boeing 787 : about 900 km/h (Mach 0.85)
- Airbus A350 : about 900 km/h (Mach 0.85)
- Regional turboprop : about 500–560 km/h
Concorde cruised at roughly 2,180 km/h (Mach 2.0) and has not been replaced, because supersonic flight burns far more fuel per passenger and the sonic boom restricts overland routes.
Airspeed vs ground speed
This is the distinction that explains why the same route takes different times in each direction.
- Airspeed : speed relative to the surrounding air. This is what the aircraft's performance depends on.
- Ground speed : speed relative to the ground. Airspeed plus or minus the wind.
The jet stream can run at 200 km/h or more. Flying east with it, ground speed might reach 1,100 km/h; flying west against it, the same aircraft at the same airspeed might make 700 km/h. That is why London to New York reliably takes about an hour longer than New York to London.
Why aircraft use knots
Aviation and shipping both use knots : one nautical mile per hour : because a nautical mile equals one minute of latitude. That makes navigation on a globe far simpler when working from charts. One knot is 1.852 km/h.
Our speed converter handles knots alongside km/h, mph and m/s.
Can you measure it with a phone?
Sometimes, with real caveats. GPS needs line of sight to satellites, and a window seat gives a far better chance than an aisle. Many receivers also apply altitude or speed limits inherited from export-control rules, and some stop reporting above certain thresholds.
If it does work, what you see is ground speed, not airspeed : which is arguably the more interesting number, since it is what determines when you land. Our GPS speedometer works in the browser, but flight mode blocks positioning on most phones unless you re-enable location, and you should follow the crew's instructions rather than ours.
Takeoff and landing speeds
- Takeoff rotation : typically 240–290 km/h depending on weight
- Approach : typically 240–265 km/h
- Touchdown : typically 220–250 km/h
These feel far faster than cruise because you have the ground for reference. At 11,000 m with nothing close by, 900 km/h feels like nothing at all : which is the same reason a train at 300 km/h feels fast and a plane at triple that does not.
The takeaway
800–950 km/h is the normal cruising band, and it has stayed there because it is the most fuel-efficient speed for a subsonic jet, not because faster is impossible. The number your phone shows in flight is ground speed, which the wind moves around by hundreds of km/h.