Route planning & distance

The longest flights in the world

The longest airport pairs flown non-stop, with distances computed from real airport coordinates rather than copied — plus why 'longest' means three different things depending on what you measure.

Published 7 September 2026 · Updated 7 September 2026 · Last reviewed 7 September 2026

Most lists of the world’s longest flights disagree with each other, sometimes by hundreds of kilometres. That is because a lot of them copy figures from each other, and because “longest” is genuinely ambiguous — it can mean distance, scheduled duration, or time actually spent in the air, and those produce different rankings.

This table takes one position and states it precisely: distance between the two airports, computed from their real coordinates, recalculated every time this site rebuilds.

The longest airport pairs

#Airport pairCities Kilometres Miles Est. time Usually flown by
1 SIN – JFK Singapore – New York 15,349 9,537 18h 51m Singapore Airlines
2 SIN – EWR Singapore – Newark 15,345 9,535 18h 51m Singapore Airlines
3 AKL – DOH Auckland – Doha 14,534 9,031 17h 53m Qatar Airways
4 PER – LHR Perth – London 14,499 9,009 17h 50m Qantas
5 DFW – MEL Dallas-Fort Worth – Melbourne 14,472 8,992 17h 49m Qantas
6 AKL – JFK Auckland – New York 14,208 8,828 17h 30m Air New Zealand
7 DXB – AKL Dubai – Auckland 14,199 8,823 17h 29m Emirates
8 LAX – SIN Los Angeles – Singapore 14,114 8,770 17h 23m Singapore Airlines
9 BLR – SFO Bengaluru – San Francisco 14,003 8,701 17h 15m Air India
10 IAH – SYD Houston – Sydney 13,834 8,596 17h 03m United Airlines
11 SYD – DFW Sydney – Dallas-Fort Worth 13,804 8,578 17h 01m Qantas
12 MNL – JFK Manila – New York 13,712 8,520 16h 54m Philippine Airlines
13 SFO – SIN San Francisco – Singapore 13,593 8,446 16h 46m Singapore Airlines / United Airlines
14 JNB – ATL Johannesburg – Atlanta 13,582 8,439 16h 45m Delta Air Lines
15 BLR – JFK Bengaluru – New York 13,363 8,303 16h 29m Air India
16 HKG – JFK Hong Kong – New York 12,990 8,072 16h 03m Cathay Pacific
17 SEA – SIN Seattle – Singapore 12,988 8,071 16h 03m Singapore Airlines
18 DEL – SFO New Delhi – San Francisco 12,404 7,708 15h 21m Air India

Distances are geodesic, computed from each airport's coordinates on the WGS-84 ellipsoid, and rebuilt every time this site is deployed. Estimated times come from distance alone and ignore wind — see methodology. Carrier names indicate who is generally associated with the pair, not a live schedule.

What this table does and does not claim

The distances are exact, in the sense that they are what the geometry gives. They are geodesic distances on the WGS-84 ellipsoid — the same reference surface GPS uses — calculated with Vincenty’s formula from each airport’s published coordinates. Nothing is rounded from a secondary source.

What the table does not tell you is whether a given pair is being flown today. This site holds no schedules, no fares and no availability, and airlines add and drop ultra-long-haul routes regularly: they are expensive to run, sensitive to fuel prices, and among the first cut when demand softens. The carrier column indicates who is generally associated with a pair, not a live timetable. For what is actually operating, ask the airline.

That distinction matters more here than on most topics, because ultra-long-haul is exactly where published lists go stale fastest.

Why “longest” has three answers

By distance. The measure used above: how far apart the two airports are. It is the only one of the three that never changes, because it is a property of the geography rather than of any airline’s operation.

By scheduled duration. How long the airline blocks the flight for. This is longer than distance alone implies, and differs by direction: a route flown against the jet stream is scheduled longer than the same route with it. It is why a flight can be the longest by time without being the longest by distance.

By actual airborne time. What the aircraft really does on a given day, which varies with winds, routing and how long it holds before landing.

A route ranked first on one measure is often not first on another. Any list that does not say which one it is using is not really telling you anything.

Why the numbers look wrong on a map

Look up any of these pairs on a flat map and the sensible-looking straight line is not the route. The shortest path between two points on a sphere is a great circle, which on the usual Mercator projection appears as a curve bending toward the nearer pole.

That is why flights from North America to Asia pass close to the Arctic, and why a Singapore–New York routing goes nowhere near the middle of the Pacific. The route pages on this site draw the actual great-circle path for each pair, which makes the effect obvious immediately.

It also explains a common objection to distance tables: the figure looks too short for how long the flight takes. Aircraft do not fly great circles exactly. They follow published airways, route around restricted airspace and weather, and take air traffic control instructions. Real tracks run a few percent longer than the geometric minimum, and considerably longer where airspace is constrained.

The limit is not really distance

Ultra-long-haul is bounded by payload rather than by range on paper. An aircraft that can technically fly 16,000 km cannot necessarily do it with a full load of passengers, bags and cargo, because fuel weight competes with everything else.

That produces some counter-intuitive operational choices. Airlines running the longest routes often cap seat counts well below the aircraft’s maximum, and configure cabins with fewer, larger seats — partly for comfort on a nineteen-hour flight, and partly because it is the only way the numbers work.

Airport elevation and temperature matter too. Hot air is less dense, so takeoff performance falls on hot days, and high-altitude airports compound it. It is why some long routes from high or hot airports carry seasonal payload restrictions — a constraint worth knowing if you are looking at Mexico City or Johannesburg, both well above 1,500 m.

Working out any pair yourself

The table above is a curated set. If you want a pair that is not on it, the flight distance calculator computes the same figure for any two of the 4,000-plus airports in this site’s database, and shows the time-zone difference alongside it.

For a route where the arrival date matters — most of the longest ones — the time zone planner works out the local arrival time and flags whether the calendar date shifts. On several of the pairs above it does, which is a different effect from the time-zone offset and catches people out independently of it.