Flight route, distance & flight time calculator

Choose a departure and an arrival airport by name, city, country, or IATA/ICAO code. FlightRoute calculates the shortest route over the Earth's surface that stays out of the excluded airspaces, measures its length on the WGS84 ellipsoid, and estimates how long a typical commercial jet spends in the air.

There are three kinds of route:

• Great-circle route: the mathematically shortest path between two airports.
• Airspace-adjusted route: the shortest path that also stays out of the excluded airspaces. When the direct path is blocked, this is the route shown, and the map can overlay the great-circle route for comparison.
• Actual operational route: what an airline files on the day, which also depends on airways, air traffic control, winds, weather, NOTAMs and permissions. FlightRoute does not model this.

Every route avoids the airspace of these countries:

Europe

Ukraine, Moldova, Russia (optional)

Asia

Iran, North Korea, Yemen

North and South America

Cuba

Africa

Western Sahara

• These exclusions are deliberate assumptions of this routing model. They are not a definitive or universal list of prohibited airspace.
• Airspace is approximated from each country's land border plus a margin of roughly 12 nautical miles. These are not official Flight Information Region boundaries.
• If the departure or arrival airport is inside one of these countries, that country cannot be avoided, so it is left out for that route and the result says so.
• Crimea is treated as part of the Ukraine exclusion.

Many airlines cannot use Russian airspace, but some operators, including certain Chinese airlines, can. Russia is therefore avoided by default and can be permitted with the Avoid Russian Airspace checkbox. Changing it recalculates the route, distance and flight time. All other exclusions always apply.

FlightRoute uses a transparent model of a typical commercial jet, without selecting an aircraft type:

• Climb: about 20 minutes over 220 km. Descent: about 24 minutes over 260 km.
• Cruise: 840 km/h on short routes rising to 890 km/h on long-haul routes (roughly Mach 0.78 to 0.84), in still air.
• A 12-minute allowance covers departure and arrival manoeuvring and the final approach.
• Very short flights never reach cruise altitude, so climb and descent are scaled down.
• The displayed range allows for typical head- and tailwinds of ±80 km/h. No live wind or weather data is used.

No. The estimate is airborne time only, from takeoff to landing. It excludes taxiing, ground handling, airport waiting, customs and cargo loading, so it is shorter than a published gate-to-gate schedule and much shorter than end-to-end shipment transit time for air freight.

Kilometers, statute miles (1 mi = 1.609344 km) and nautical miles (1 NM = 1.852 km). Switching units never changes the route, only how it is displayed.

No. FlightRoute provides approximate geographic routing for information and preliminary planning. It is not a flight planning or navigation system. Real airspace restrictions depend on the airline, aircraft registration, operator nationality, aviation authorities and current operational notices.