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LIS → JFK

Lisbon to New York: distance, flight time and the route it really takes

Lisbon Humberto Delgado to John F. Kennedy is 5,404 km of great circle — 3,358 mi — and an estimated 7h 13m in the air. It crosses from Europe to North America.

Great circle
5,404 km
3,358 mi
Estimated in the air
7h 13m
block time
Furthest from equator
44.6°N
at 55% along
One lap of Earth
13.5%
of 40,075 km
The Lisbon to New York route drawn as a great circle arc on a globe

What the aircraft actually flies over

From Lisbon the path crosses 5,229 km of open water, then the United States.

The furthest the great circle gets from the equator is 44.6°N, 55% of the way along.

Flying the line that looks straight on a Mercator map — one constant compass bearing — would cover 5,533 km. That is 128 km further, about 2% more, and roughly 10m of extra flying.

From

LIS

Lisbon Humberto Delgado

Lisbon, Portugal · Europe

38.8°N, 9.1°W

To

JFK

John F. Kennedy

New York, United States · North America

40.6°N, 73.8°W

Flights to New York

How these numbers are worked out

The distance is the great circle between the two airports’ real coordinates — the shortest path over a sphere, and the measure airlines and loyalty programmes use. It is computed, not looked up from a table of published routes.

The time is an estimate derived from that distance, using the same arithmetic Orbit uses when you log a flight without timestamps: a typical airliner block speed of 500 mph plus thirty minutes for taxi, climb and descent. Real schedules run longer or shorter depending on winds, air traffic control routing and how far the gate is from the runway. Aircraft also do not fly perfect great circles — jet streams, airspace closures and ETOPS limits all bend the path, usually by a few percent.

Why the shortest path is a curve →

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