Fastest Aircraft Ever Flown — Guinness World Records
About This Dataset
Fastest Aircraft Ever Flown — Guinness World Records
The fastest aircraft ever to fly, ranked by maximum recorded speed according to Guinness World Records and official flight test documentation. The NASA/USAF X-15 rocket-powered aircraft holds the speed record for a crewed powered aircraft at Mach 6.72 (7,274 km/h), set in October 1967 — a record that still stands today.
Analysis
The top three in Top Speed (km/h) in 1994 are X-15 (USA) (7,274), SR-71 Blackbird (USA) (3,530) and MiG-25 Foxbat (USSR) (3,395). The 8 entries in Top Speed (km/h) cover a range of 5,095, from 7,274 down to 2,179. Most of that gap is between first and second alone (3,744 of 5,095); the other 7 are separated by just 1,351. The other 6 are bunched between 2,179 and 3,395 Top Speed (km/h).
Source:
Guinness World Records
Key Findings
🏆
X-15 (USA) leads in Top Speed (km/h) with 7,274 in 1994.
📅
1967 recorded the highest combined total across all categories.
↔️
Gap in 1994: X-15 (USA) is 3.3× larger than Concorde (UK/France).
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- Guinness World Records
- Coverage
- 8 entities · 1967–1994 (8 years) · 8 observations
- Measure
- Top Speed (km/h)
- Last updated
- 6 September 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Missing years are left empty rather than estimated — no interpolation, no carrying a previous year forward.
- Change is measured between the first and last year in which an entity actually reported a value, so a series that starts late is not penalised for the years before it existed.
- The compound annual rate is (last ÷ first)^(1 ÷ years) − 1, using those same two reported years.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value in 1994.
- An entity that reported nothing in the latest year is still listed — it follows the ranked entities in the table rather than being dropped.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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