Tuesday, March 14, 2023

The Global Flight Time Map

I could have breakfast in London and be in New York in time for lunch. According to the Approximate Flight Time Map a plane journey from London to New York would take just under 8 hours. If I factor in the time difference then I could leave London at 8am and be in New York before midday (EDT). 

Conversely if I want to travel to Sydney then I won't arrive before dinner-time tomorrow evening. The flight to Sydney is 21 hours long and the 11 hour time difference means that if I leave London at 8am today I won't arrive before 7pm tomorrow (Australian Eastern Daylight Time).

The Approximate Flight Time Map can show you the estimated time it would take to fly from any location on Earth to anywhere else on the planet. Double-click on a location on the map and red isolines will show you the number of hours it would take to fly anywhere along each line. These isolines are roughly distanced about 1,660 km apart. This distance corresponds to approximately two hours of flight time in a commercial plane. 

The flight times suggested by the map seem to me to be a little shorter than the flight-times suggested by Google. Obviously the actual flight time would depend on a number of different factors, including the wind conditions, the speed of the plane and the flight path taken by the plane.

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