A BA flight has broken the record for the fastest-ever subsonic flight between New York and London, reaching a top speed of more than 1,287km/h. The Boeing 747 aircraft flew overnight from Saturday to Sunday and reached its destination in four hours and 56 minutes, as Storm Ciara sped towards the UK. "The flight was riding a much stronger than usual jet stream, with winds over 200 mph propelling the aircraft," says meteorologist Brandon Miller. "The supercharged jet stream is also responsible for powering Storm Ciara, which has brought damaging wind gusts and massive waves to the UK, Ireland and other parts of Northern Europe this weekend. The plane landed at Heathrow airport at 4:43 a.m., almost two hours earlier than scheduled. Its top speed during the flight was 1,327km/h. Flightradar24 announced the news of the record-breaking flight on its Twitter account, writing: "If we're not mistaken, BA now retakes the fastest subsonic NY-London crossing from Norwegian."<br/>
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A BA flight from Geneva to Gatwick has declared an emergency in order to land swiftly, after diverting to Lyon in southern France. The Airbus A320 operating BA2749 diverted to Lyon“squawked 7700” after spending hours in flight. The plane took off almost three hours late from the Swiss airport, and flew a holding pattern near Gatwick. But it was unable to land safely, and the decision was taken to fly to Lyon – just 100 miles from where it had started. Having spent far longer than normal in flight, the plane is thought to have been running close to its fuel reserves – which allow for half-an-hour of flight. The BA operation at its main base, Heathrow, is “unravelling,” according to one passenger caught up in the chaos caused by Storm Ciara. BA had pre-emptively cancelled about 140 flights – but has now abruptly cancelled dozens more from its hub at Heathrow Terminal 5. Many of them are long-haul flights, each of them involving hundreds of passengers. Many other carriers are experiencing problems. Emirates flight 15 from Dubai to Gatwick made several attempts at landing before diverting to Zurich. The disruption is likely to take days to sort out, and will cost the airlines tens of millions of pounds in care costs, additional flying and lost revenue.<br/>
Malaysian business news website Focus Malaysia said Friday that the country’s sovereign wealth fund has asked it to stop reporting confidential information about the sale of Malaysia Airlines and has threatened it with legal action. The fund, Khazanah Nasional Berhad, said that it had asked Focus Malaysia to stop releasing confidential information about the sale, saying the reports were damaging the process. A spokesman later confirmed that a legal notice had also been sent to the website. Focus Malaysia last month published a series of reports about the sale of Malaysia Airlines, owned by the sovereign fund. On Friday, it said it had received an email from Khazanah’s lawyers asking it not to publish articles on the airline based on confidential material. The editor in chief said the portal had published the reports in the public interest.<br/>