AY73 distance and great-circle path
AY73 covers 7,824 km, or 4,862 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 144 by distance.
The plane leaves Helsinki heading north-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-HND route appears on a tracker map.
Why AY73 block time differs from cruise time
The schedule allows 13.2 hours from gate to gate. That works out to about 594 km/h. An Airbus A350-900 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 A350-900 comfortably fly AY73?
Not at all. At roughly 52% of its range, this is an easy trip for an Airbus A350-900. The airline picked it for cabin size, not distance. The full numbers are on our aircraft page for the Airbus A350-900.
What to know about AY73
- Time change: you land 7 hours ahead of the time you left. That is enough to cause jet lag. Here is how pilots handle it.
- Flies far north: the real path runs much closer to the pole than a flat map suggests.