airport-dist

A CLI tool to calculate geographical and aviation route distances between airports using IATA codes, with flight time estimates.

Installation

npm install -g airport-dist

Usage

# Using long flags
airport-dist --from JFK --to LAX

# Using short flags
airport-dist -f LHR -t DXB

Output

The tool provides two distance measurements plus flight time:

1. Geographical Distance - Great circle (Haversine) distance, the shortest path between two points on Earth
2. Aviation Route Distance - Actual airline route distance from bundled route database (55,000+ routes)
3. Flight Time - Estimated flight duration from airline data

Calculating distances from JFK to LAX...

Airports Found:
  From: John F. Kennedy International Airport (New York, United States)
  To:   Los Angeles International Airport (Los Angeles, United States)

============================================================
DISTANCE RESULTS
============================================================

1. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTANCE (Great Circle / Haversine):
   3974.34 km
   2469.54 miles
   2145.97 nautical miles

2. AVIATION ROUTE DISTANCE:
   3982.00 km
   2474.30 miles
   2150.11 nautical miles
   Flight time: 6h 19m
   Source: Airline route data (bundled)

============================================================

Note: Aviation routes may differ from great circle distance due to
airways, restricted airspace, weather patterns, and traffic flow.

Options

| Option | Alias | Description | |--------|-------|-------------| | --from | -f | Origin airport IATA code (e.g., JFK) | | --to | -t | Destination airport IATA code (e.g., LAX) | | --version | -V | Show version number | | --help | -h | Show help |

Data Sources

• Airport Database: 150+ major international airports with coordinates
• Route Database: 55,000+ airline routes with distances and flight times from Jonty/airline-route-data
• Fallback: Estimation using industry-standard routing factors when route not in database

How It Works

• Geographical Distance: Calculated using the Haversine formula, which determines the great-circle distance between two points on a sphere given their latitudes and longitudes.

• Aviation Route Distance: Sourced from bundled airline route data containing actual flight distances. Falls back to estimation for routes not in the database.

• Flight Time: Sourced from bundled airline route data. Only available for routes in the database.

License

MIT