Nonstop flight route between Bury St. Edmunds, England, United Kingdom and Kandahar, Afghanistan:

About this route:

A direct, nonstop flight between RAF Honington USAAF Station 375 (BEQ), Bury St. Edmunds, England, United Kingdom and Kabul International Airport (KDH), Kandahar, Afghanistan would travel a Great Circle distance of 3,504 miles (or 5,639 kilometers).

A Great Circle is the shortest distance between 2 points on a sphere. Because most world maps are flat (but the Earth is round), the route of the shortest distance between 2 points on the Earth will often appear curved when viewed on a flat map, especially for long distances. If you were to simply draw a straight line on a flat map and measure a very long distance, it would likely be much further than if you were to lay a string between those two points on a globe. Because of the large distance between RAF Honington USAAF Station 375 and Kabul International Airport, the route shown on this map most likely appears curved because of this reason.

Try it at home! Get a globe and tightly lay a string between RAF Honington USAAF Station 375 and Kabul International Airport. You'll see that it will travel the same route of the red line on this map!

Departure Airport Information:

Arrival Airport Information:

Facts about RAF Honington USAAF Station 375 (BEQ):

• Construction of Honington airfield began in 1935, and the facility was opened on 3 May 1937.
• In 1941, a Junkers Ju 88 was shot down by ground fire from Honington.
• Converted from P-38 Lightnings to P-51 Mustangs in the summer of 1944 and from then until the end of the war flew many long-range escort missions heavy bombers that attacked oil refineries, industries, and other strategic objectives at Berlin, Regensburg, Merseburg, Stuttgart, Brussels, and elsewhere.
• The closest airport to RAF Honington USAAF Station 375 (BEQ) is RAF Lakenheath (LKZ), which is located only 10 miles (16 kilometers) WNW of BEQ.
• English Electric Canberra bomber squadrons, 10, XV, 44, and 57 were based at RAF Honington from February 1955 to 1957.
• The furthest airport from RAF Honington USAAF Station 375 (BEQ) is Chatham Islands (CHT), which is located 11,834 miles (19,044 kilometers) away in Waitangi, Chatham Islands, New Zealand.
• In the event, the F-111 never entered service with the RAF, and in 1968, the airfield became the UK base for the RAF's Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer bomber.

Facts about Kabul International Airport (KDH):

• Kabul International Airport (KDH) currently has only 1 runway.
• In addition to being known as "Kabul International Airport", other names for KDH include "Kandahar International Airport (Kandahar)" and "میدان هوایی بین المللی کندهار".
• The Afghan government has been slow in rebuilding the facility, the vast majority of it has been reclaimed from years of neglect and damage by Soviet and Taliban soldiers.
• The furthest airport from Kabul International Airport (KDH) is Mataveri International Airport (IPC), which is nearly antipodal to Kabul International Airport (meaning Kabul International Airport is almost on the exact opposite side of the Earth from Mataveri International Airport), and is located 12,023 miles (19,349 kilometers) away in Easter Island, Chile.
• The airfield itself was built between 1956 and 1962 by American consultants, for a cost of USD 15 million.
• As part of Operation Enduring Freedom, the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy also had based a squadron of Harrier GR7A aircraft at Kandahar Airfield to provide close air support to coalition ground forces replacing USMC AV-8B's.
• The closest airport to Kabul International Airport (KDH) is Tarin Kowt Airport (TII), which is located 76 miles (123 kilometers) N of KDH.
• The deployments in February 2006 brought Task Force Afghanistan in Kandahar to about 2,250 personnel.