Distance between London and Tokyo (straight line)
The straight-line distance between London (United Kingdom) and Tokyo (Japan) is 5,939 miles (9,559 km), as the crow flies, measured from one city centre to the other. It is the shortest path over the Earth's surface; any road between them is longer.
Straight-line distance
5,939 miles
9,559 km · straight line
Heading from London
32° (north-northeast)
initial compass bearing to Tokyo
Flight time estimate, not a booking
~11 h 55 min
at about 800 km/h, in the air only
Straight-line (great-circle) distance, as the crow flies. The road distance is longer.
LondonTokyoThe line is the great circle: straight over the globe, curved on a flat map.
Measure your own two places
Pick any two cities, addresses or coordinates in the calculator, or start from where you are standing. It gives the same straight-line distance, in miles and kilometres.
London to Tokyo at a glance
- Straight-line distance
- 5,939 miles (9,559 km), as the crow flies
- Heading from London
- 32° (north-northeast) to Tokyo
- Heading from Tokyo
- 336° (north-northwest) to London
- Midpoint
- 69.0126° N, 89.6676° E, halfway along the straight line
- Flight time estimate, not a booking
- About 11 h 55 min in the air at a cruising speed of 800 km/h along the straight line. Take-off, landing, the real flight path and any stops add more.
- London, United Kingdom
- 51.5085° N, 0.1257° W (city centre)
- Tokyo, Japan
- 35.6895° N, 139.6917° E (city centre)
Nearby city pairs
Other distances from London
- London to Birmingham101 miles
- London to Manchester163 miles
- London to Liverpool178 miles
- London to Paris214 miles
- London to Amsterdam222 miles
- London to Edinburgh332 miles
Other distances from Tokyo
- Tokyo to Hong Kong1,791 miles
- Tokyo to Bangkok2,860 miles
- Tokyo to Singapore3,305 miles
- Tokyo to Delhi3,625 miles
- Tokyo to Mumbai4,178 miles
- Tokyo to Sydney4,863 miles
Questions
Is 5,939 miles (9,559 km) the driving distance from London to Tokyo?
No. 5,939 miles (9,559 km) is the straight-line distance between the two city centres, as the crow flies. A road route is always longer, because roads bend around terrain and water, and MapGO does not measure driving distance or travel time.
How is the distance between London and Tokyo measured?
Along a great circle: the shortest line over the Earth's surface, from London's centre (51.5085° N, 0.1257° W) to Tokyo's (35.6895° N, 139.6917° E). This is what "straight-line distance" and "as the crow flies" mean on a globe. On a flat map the line can look curved.
How accurate is this distance?
Within about 0.5% for the two centre points. The figure treats the Earth as a sphere (the haversine formula), while the real Earth is slightly flattened, which shifts a long straight-line distance by up to about 0.5%. Measuring from another part of either city changes it more, since a large city can be tens of kilometres across.
Computed by MapGO from each city's centre point (GeoNames) with the haversine formula. All distances on this page are straight lines over the Earth's surface, not road distances.