London to New York Travel Time, 1500–2025
Sailing ships, steamers, flying boats, Concorde — and the twist: we got slower when Concorde retired in 2003.
The story
For 338 years — 1500 to 1838 — the fastest way across the Atlantic was a sailing ship, and the best you could hope for was about six weeks. Then steam engines arrived and within a generation the crossing was down to five days.
The real collapse came in 1939: Pan American Airways launched the first scheduled transatlantic commercial service using Boeing 314 flying boats. The journey took 23 hours and cost $675 one-way — about $14,000 today. No runways needed; the aircraft landed on water and refuelled in the Azores.
By 1958 Boeing 707 jets cut the crossing to 10 hours. By 1970 it was 7 hours. Then in 1976, Concorde brought it down to 3.5 hours — faster than the time difference between London and New York.
In 2003, British Airways and Air France retired Concorde. No commercial aircraft has flown supersonically across the Atlantic since. In a rare reversal of technological progress, the fastest crossing today is slower than it was 27 years ago.