How to Calculate Travel Time of an Airplane with Tailwind

[black_hole]

Homework Statement

An airplane flying North at 119.7 m/s encounters a 46.8 m/s tailwind. If the plane's destination is 573 km due North, what will its travel time be?

Homework Equations

The Attempt at a Solution

I added the two velocities: 166.5 m/s. Then divided that by 573000, but that's not right becasue I get a very small number of seconds. What I am doing wrong.

 

[PherricOxide]

Velocity = Change in position / Change in time

Change in time = Change in position / velocity

I think you were doing velocity / change in position instead.

 

[A_Munk3y]

Homework Statement

An airplane flying North at 119.7 m/s encounters a 46.8 m/s tailwind. If the plane's destination is 573 km due North, what will its travel time be?

Homework Equations

The Attempt at a Solution

I added the two velocities: 166.5 m/s. Then divided that by 573000, but that's not right becasue I get a very small number of seconds. What I am doing wrong.

your doing your math wrong.
if the plane is going at 166.5 m/s, convert that to km ---->166.5m/s(1km/1000m).
you should get a low number (something like 0.16...), and that's how many km the plane goes in 1 second.
It would also make it easier if you change seconds to hours (multiply by 3600 since there are 3600 seconds per hour), or just keep it as km/seconds if you would rather that.
Anyways, you should get around 599 km/hour, and then you can calculate how much time that it would take if you the distance is 573km, and the plane is going around 599km/hr.check that though, i just did it in my head, so my math could be way off
or i could be completely wrong

hope that helped