Flight Distance Calculator

About the Flight Distance Calculator

Find how far it is between two airports — or along a whole route with stops — measured the way aviation and the EU passenger-rights rules do: the shortest path over the Earth’s surface, the great circle. Type IATA codes (DEL, LHR), ICAO codes (VIDP, EGLL), a city or airport name, or coordinates. You get the distance in kilometres, statute miles and nautical miles, the initial compass course, an estimated flight time and the distance band of EU Regulation 261/2004.

The distance is calculated on the WGS-84 ellipsoid with Charles Karney’s geodesic algorithm — the calculation itself is exact to well under a millimetre — and the result on a simple sphere is shown beside it. The airport list holds about 5,900 airports from OurAirports’ public-domain data, and everything is worked out in your browser.

Common uses

• Checking the distance of a flight for an EU261 compensation claim before using the flight compensation calculator.
• Logging flown miles or kilometres, or estimating the carbon footprint of a trip with a calculator that needs the distance.
• Planning a multi-city trip and comparing a direct flight with a route through a hub.
• Pilots and flight-simulator users measuring ICAO-to-ICAO distances in nautical miles with the initial true course.

How the distance is worked out

Each airport is a point (its reference point in the OurAirports data). The distance between two points is the geodesic — the shortest path on the WGS-84 ellipsoid (equatorial radius 6,378,137 m, flattening 1/298.257223563), the Earth model GPS uses — solved with Karney’s algorithm (Algorithms for geodesics, Journal of Geodesy, doi:10.1007/s00190-012-0578-z), which works for every pair of points, nearly opposite ones included. The tool’s implementation reproduces GeographicLib’s published results, such as 19,959,679.267 m from Wellington to Salamanca.

The sphere figure uses the haversine formula with the mean Earth radius of 6,371,008.8 m. It differs from the ellipsoid result by up to about 0.6%, shorter or longer depending on the direction and the latitude; many websites quote it. A statute mile is exactly 1.609344 km and a nautical mile exactly 1.852 km.

What “initial course” means

A great circle crosses each meridian at a different angle, so the direction changes along the way. The initial course is the direction at departure, in degrees clockwise from true north — 316° (north-west) from Delhi towards London. It is the true course of the shortest path — the heading an aircraft flies also depends on the wind, the magnetic variation and the routes air traffic control assigns.

The flight-time estimate

The estimate is distance ÷ average speed, plus a fixed number of minutes for taxiing, take-off, climb, descent and landing — 800 km/h and 30 minutes unless you change them — added for each leg. Real flight times also depend on the wind (westbound flights against the jet stream take longer), the routes flown, the aircraft and queues at busy airports, and the time between connecting flights is not included. Use it for a rough idea, and the airline’s schedule for real times.

EU261 distance bands

Compensation under Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 for a long delay, a cancellation or denied boarding depends on the distance, measured by the great-circle route (Art. 7(4)). The bands, as the European Commission’s Your Europe page lists them:

• 1,500 km or less — €250;
• more than 1,500 km within the EU, and other flights of 1,500 to 3,500 km — €400;
• more than 3,500 km — €600.

The rules cover flights within the EU, flights that leave from an EU airport, and flights into the EU on an EU airline; the same page says they also apply to flights to and from Iceland, Norway and Switzerland, which the tool counts with the EU for the middle band (Oslo to Tenerife, 4,138 km, is in the €400 band, as in the flight compensation calculator). When no airport on the route is in the EU, Iceland, Norway or Switzerland — Mumbai to Dubai, or Delhi to London — the tool says the EU rules do not cover it.

For a journey with connections the band follows the distance from the first departure to the final destination, which the tool shows separately. The airline may pay half when it re-routes you and you arrive not long after the planned time. The band says nothing about whether compensation is due — that depends on where the flight left from, the airline, what happened and the airline’s reasons. Check that with the flight compensation calculator, which also covers the UK and Indian rules; this is general information, not legal advice.

The airport list

The airports come from OurAirports, whose data is in the public domain: about 4,100 airports with an IATA code and scheduled passenger flights, loaded when you start typing, and about 1,800 more large and medium airports — with an IATA code but no scheduled flights listed, or with only an ICAO code, such as many military fields — loaded when a search needs them. Closed airports are left out. City codes such as LON, NYC or TYO, which stand for all of a city’s airports, ask you to pick one.

Limitations

• The distance is the shortest path, not the distance actually flown: airways, weather and air-traffic control usually make flights a little longer.
• Airport positions are their reference points rounded to about 11 m; a runway or terminal can be a few kilometres away from it.
• Small airfields without scheduled flights are not listed unless they are large or medium airports; type their coordinates instead.
• The flight time is an estimate from an average speed, not a timetable, and the EU261 band does not tell you whether compensation is due.

Privacy

Everything is calculated in your browser, and the airport list is downloaded from MySmartCoPilot itself. The tool remembers only your choice of unit in this browser. A copied route link holds only the airport codes or coordinates you entered.