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How to Calculate Flight Distance

Calculating flight distance on an aeronautical chart is perhaps simpler than planning a driving route on a road map. On the aeronautical chart locate your departure and destination airports. Using a series of straight lines, plot a course from the departure point to the destination point bearing in mind the following:

• Flight restrictions for your aircraft (altitude, fuel tank size)


• Physical obstructions (such as heights of buildings, towers, mountains, mountain passes)


• Other restrictions (such as restricted airspace, restricted airways, assigned airways)

Aeronautical charts usually use as a scale of 1:500,000 (or sometimes written 1/500,000). This means that 1 single unit on the chart (which could be inch, foot, yard, statute mile, nautical mile or kilometer) represents 500,000 of that same unit on the ground. So, if the aeronautical chart uses inches, then 1 inch on the chart equals 500,000 inches on the Earth. Check elsewhere on the chart to see the conversion scale of chart distance to statute or nautical miles. The smaller the scale of the chart, the less the detail can be shown on the chart. With chart measurements being equal, a 1:250,000 scale will provide greater detail than a chart with a scale of a 1:1,000,000 because the first chart will cover a smaller amount of area.

Using the conversion scale as indicated on the aeronautical chart, calculate the total number of miles to be flown by multiplying the total number of inches measured by scale of miles to inches.

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