Flight Time Between Cities: Times for the World's Busiest Routes
When you want the flight time between two specific cities, you usually want a number, not a lecture. This page gives you both: the fastest way to find the time for any pair of cities, and a quick reference for some of the busiest city-to-city routes in the world.
The fastest way to find any city pair
You do not need to dig through a schedule. Open the flight time calculator, type the two cities or their airport codes, and you get the distance, the estimated flight time, and the local time you would land, all in a second. London to New York, for instance, comes out at a little over seven hours. It works for any pair, a big hub or a small regional airport.
Flight times between popular cities
Here are rough nonstop times for some of the routes people search most. Where a route runs east to west across strong winds, the two directions can differ by an hour or more, so treat each one as a typical figure.
Across the Atlantic
- London to New York: about 7 to 8 hours
- Paris to New York: about 8 hours
- London to Toronto: about 8 hours
Across the Pacific
- Tokyo to Los Angeles: about 10 to 11 hours
- Hong Kong to San Francisco: about 12 to 13 hours
- Sydney to Los Angeles: about 14 to 15 hours
Around Asia and the Gulf
- Mumbai to Dubai: about 3 hours
- Dubai to Bangkok: about 6 and a half hours
- Singapore to Tokyo: about 7 hours
- Dubai to Singapore: about 7 and a half hours
Europe to Asia and the Gulf
- London to Dubai: about 7 hours
- Frankfurt to Delhi: about 8 hours
- Delhi to London: about 9 hours
- London to Singapore: about 13 to 14 hours
The really long ones
Singapore to New York runs about 18 to 19 hours nonstop, the longest scheduled flight in the world. For the giants flown out of India, see the longest nonstop flights from India.
When a city has more than one airport
Some cities spread their flights across several airports, and people usually search by city name rather than by airport. London has Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted; New York has JFK, Newark and LaGuardia; Tokyo has Haneda and Narita. The good news is that the flight time barely changes between them, since the airports sit only a few kilometres apart, so London to New York is roughly the same whether you land at JFK or Newark. What does change is how far you then are from where you are actually headed, so it is worth checking which airport your flight uses before you sort out the taxi at the other end.
Why the same pair can take different times each way
Two flights between the same cities are rarely identical. The jet stream gives an eastbound flight a tailwind and a westbound flight a headwind, so the return leg can be noticeably shorter or longer, which is why the return flight is often faster. A connecting itinerary adds the layover and the detour, easily turning a 9-hour nonstop into a 14-hour day. And the figure you see is an estimate, since real routing and winds vary, as explained in how flight time is calculated.
Look up your own pair
For your exact route, put the two cities into the flight time calculator. Whether it is two big metros or a small regional airport, you get the distance, the time and your local arrival on the spot. If you would rather see times by distance than by city, our guide on how long a flight takes sorts the world into easy bands.
So the flight time between any two cities is never more than a few seconds away. Use the reference above for the popular routes, and the calculator for everything else.