How is it that a flight to Washington from Savannah is 2h while a flight to New York from Savannah is 2.5h, is the 300mile distance condensed into 30m ?

Question

I don’t know much about planes or physics, maybe someone smarter can help.

In: 1

Answer 1

Remember that “flight time” runs from the moment the plane pulls out from the gate to when the plane pulls into the destination gate, and includes elements common to al flights like potentially needing to circle to wait for clearance to land. Those elements take about the same amount of total time whether the total flight distance is 5 miles or 5,000 miles.

If those elements take 45 minutes to complete, then your actual travel time becomes 1:15 WAS->SAV and 1:45 NYC->SAV, so the NY trip is about 40% longer than the Washington one, distance-wise.