A video shared on TikTok, which has garnered over 1.8 million views, shows how fast commercial airplanes actually go while flying, that is, when we are not looking at them from a great distance.
There’s a name for the effect that makes airplanes seem like they’re not flying as fast. It is called “Parallax”, and it is based on the speed of movement of an object through our field of vision.
So it seems that a car driving very fast on a highway with things passing by very quickly is faster than an airplane in the sky, which stays in our field of vision much longer. However, this TikTok video bypasses “Parallax” and shows just how fast planes actually are. The Boeing 737 seen in the video, which is a common airliner, has a cruising speed of an astonishing 877 kilometers per hour.
