---
title: "CHC — Christchurch Airport, Christchurch · Orbit"
description: "Christchurch International Airport (CHC/NZCH) serves Christchurch, New Zealand. Opened 1940, 3.7 million passengers in 2021, 10 km from Christchurch."
url: https://orbitflights.app/airports/chc
---

Christchurch · New Zealand · Oceania

# CHC — Christchurch

Christchurch International Airport serves Christchurch, New Zealand, 10 km from the city centre, and sits at 43.5°S, 172.5°E. This site carries 2 routes touching it, with the great circle distance for each.

**IATA**
CHC
the code on your bag tag

**ICAO**
NZCH
used by air traffic control

**Opened**
1940
per Wikidata

**Passengers**
3.7M
in 2021

## History & name

Christchurch International Airport opened in 1940 and takes its name from Christchurch, the city it serves from about 10 km away. It handled 3.7 million passengers in 2021 and has 3 runways, the longest 3,288 m, at an elevation of 123 feet.

Read more: [Wikipedia ↗](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch%5FInternational%5FAirport) · [Wikidata ↗](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1061330)

## At a glance

**Full name**
Christchurch International Airport

**Serves**
Christchurch, New Zealand

**City centre**
10 km from Christchurch

**Opened**
1940

**Passengers**
3.7 million in 2021

**Runways**
3 runways, longest 3,288 m

**Elevation**
123 ft (37 m)

**Map**
[Open in Google Maps ↗](https://www.google.com/maps/search/?api=1&query=-43.48900,172.53210)

**Website**
[christchurchairport.co.nz ↗](http://www.christchurchairport.co.nz/)

## Where it sits

43.5°S, 172.5°E puts CHC in the southern hemisphere, 4,836 km from the equator and 5,172 km from the South pole.

Of the 661 airports on this site it is the **656th** most northerly, which makes it the 6th most southerly.

## Straight through the middle

Straight down through the centre of the Earth comes out at 43.5°N, 7.5°W — 268 km from Francisco de Sá Carneiro (OPO) in Portugal, which is about as close to a true antipodal airport pair as this table gets.

## What’s near it

The closest other airport on this site is **Nelson** (NSN), 250 km away in a straight line. Nothing else on this site is within 100 km.

## Distances from CHC

Great circle distance and an estimated time in the air. The longest is Sydney, at 2,126 km.

| To                                                     |     | Distance | Estimated |
| ------------------------------------------------------ | --- | -------- | --------- |
| [Auckland](https://orbitflights.app/routes/akl-to-chc) | AKL | 745 km   | 1h 26m    |
| [Sydney](https://orbitflights.app/routes/syd-to-chc)   | SYD | 2,126 km | 3h 09m    |

[Distance from CHC to any airport →](https://orbitflights.app/distance?from=CHC&to=SYD) [Map a trip from CHC →](https://orbitflights.app/tools/flight-route-map?r=CHC-SYD)

## Where these facts come from

The profile is looked up, not written from memory: type, runways, elevation and the official website from [OurAirports](https://ourairports.com/data/) (public domain); opening year, namesake, operator and passenger count from [Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/) (CC0); the city centre from [GeoNames](https://www.geonames.org/) (CC BY 4.0). Where a source has nothing, the line is left out. Distances, neighbours and the antipode are computed from the coordinates.

What you won’t find: terminal maps, airline lists, shops or live departures. Orbit is a logbook, not a flight tracker, and a page that guessed at those would be worse than one that leaves them out.

[Measure CHC to anywhere →](https://orbitflights.app/distance)

## Flown through CHC?

Orbit knows all 8,801 airports offline and works out the distance the moment you enter two codes.

[Download now](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.qwertybit.orbit)

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Markdown copy of https://orbitflights.app/airports/chc for language models and agents. Site index: https://orbitflights.app/llms.txt