The moment I stepped onto the plane, our lovely flight attendant Lanis Thate-Hembree greeted each passenger by name and served a welcome cocktail. As I sipped and settled in, I immediately noticed two things that felt worlds away from a typical commercial airline experience. First was the oversized windows that essentially gave you a panoramic view of the world around you—a particularly spectacular experience on California’s Central Coast, between the rolling green hills and the bright blue ocean. And second was just how astonishingly quiet it was onboard. We could easily have conversations across the entire conference room, despite being 20 feet away.
Then at cruising altitude we hardly felt any bumps, even over the notoriously bumpy Rockies. We leveled off between 41,000 and 45,000 feet—about 10,000 feet above commercial airliners—where the plane can not only fly faster, but avoid most turbulence. Plus, the Global 7500’s wings are designed to absorb any bumps for a smooth ride. One of our three pilots, BJ Ferro, calls the experience of flying the Global 7500 “cosmic,” as if you are floating in orbit rather than zooming forward at nearly 700 miles per hour.
Because the flight is so smooth, it hardly feels as if you’re flying, and that’s a point of distinction for Bombardier. “In theory, your day will just continue as normal as you sit aboard the plane,” says Masluch. For execs, that could be taking Zoom calls in the conference room (the in-flight Wi-Fi was fast enough on our flight for video calls). For leisure travelers, that could be watching a movie in the living room, or perhaps even getting a full night of sleep in the bedroom. For the six of us onboard, that was largely just standing in the cabin chatting, relishing the fact that there was enough space to do so comfortably.
Eventually, we took our seats for our three-course dinner; the conference room doubled as a dining room, with a pop-up table that comfortably seated all six of us. Soups, salads, steaks, and even pasta bolognese graced the table, followed by an assortment of petit fours (how’s that for plane food?). As we munched on sweets for dessert, I asked Lanis to see a light show. I specifically meant a demonstration of the more than 125 in-cabin light settings, including a dancing rainbow display that I was particularly keen to see. But Mother Nature had a different show in mind.
As we were ooh-ing and aah-ing over the cabin lights, chief pilot Étienne Côté got on the PA. If we looked to the right, he said, we’d see a pretty striking display of the northern lights. Now, I’ve been fortunate to see the aurora many times before, but this was an hours-long spectacle that had me glued to the window, seeing all sorts of auroral formations: picket fences, cinnamon buns, and shimmering curtains. When I finally dragged myself away to my bed, a cushy mattress pad swathed in a thick comforter atop several chairs, the green glow illuminated the cabin.
Eventually, I nodded off, only to be awoken by dawn an hour later. I had time for a quick iced coffee, and that was it—we landed at London’s Biggin Hill airport, and our flight was over far too soon. That said, we had flown to set a record, and we accomplished our mission: Our flight lasted nine hours and 17 minutes, covering a ground distance of 4,934 nautical miles at a top speed of 690 miles per hour. A commercial flight from Los Angeles to London typically takes 10.5 hours; we had shaved over an entire hour off the transatlantic journey.
Now, onto the 101st speed record…
