AY121 distance and great-circle path
AY121 covers 5,224 km, or 3,246 miles. That makes it a long-haul flight, a widebody route with a full night's flying time. Of the 439 routes we track, it ranks 226 by distance.
The plane leaves Helsinki heading east. On the map above, the line looks curved. That is normal. The shortest path over a round planet never looks straight on a flat screen. Our guide explains how the HEL-DEL route appears on a tracker map.
Why AY121 block time differs from cruise time
The schedule allows 8.5 hours from gate to gate. That works out to about 615 km/h. An Airbus A330-300 cruises faster than that. The gap is taxi time, climbing, descending and holding.
Flying east, this route usually picks up tailwinds high up. The flight back west normally takes longer, even though the distance is identical. See how timing changes the trip in our red-eye flight guide.
Can the Airbus A330-300 comfortably fly AY121?
Not at all. At roughly 44% of its range, this is an easy trip for an Airbus A330-300. The airline picked it for cabin size, not distance. The full numbers are on our aircraft page for the Airbus A330-300.
What to know about AY121
- Time change: you land 4 hours ahead of the time you left.
- Flies far north: the real path runs much closer to the pole than a flat map suggests.