Why is the flight time of London-Beijing and Tel Aviv-Beijing the same?
- By
- Aparna Patel
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- 29 Jul, 2023
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The great circle distance from LHR to PEK is 8174km and the scheduled flight time is 10:10 (British Airways). The great circle distance from TLV to PEK is 7155km and the scheduled flight time is 9:20.
There is no condradiction between a 1000km difference in flight distance and a 50 minute difference in scheduled flight time.
In part this is due to flights from Tel Aviv avoiding some problem regions. But a larger part is that, while it is a 5 hour flight from London to Tel Aviv, flights from London to Beijing don’t fly anywhere near Tel Aviv.
Looking at a typical Mercator projection map, it may seem like a flight from London to Beijing wouldn’t have to go very far out of its way to stop in Tel Aviv. But that map horribly distorts distances at different latitudes.
In fact the actual distance from London (Heathrow) to Beijing is 8162 km while Tel Aviv to Beijing is 7149 km. London-Tel Aviv is 3593 km.
If you look up some flights for actual routes. London-Beijing is close to flying direct (8400 km) while Tel Aviv-Beijing goes further out of its way (7800 km)
– Flights BA 39 and HU 7958. Data from FlightAware
Keep in mind that the more northerly route is more distorted, making it look longer on this map.
So in the end there is only about 600 km difference in the actual flight path. About 45 minutes. Both flights took about the same time (9 hours 30 minutes). The remaining difference is likely due to different prevailing winds, different airplanes etc.
Credit:stackoverflow.com‘