Nonstop flight route between Oxfordshire, England, United Kingdom and Fairford, England, United Kingdom:

About this route:

A direct, nonstop flight between RAF Brize Norton (BZZ), Oxfordshire, England, United Kingdom and RAF Fairford (FFD), Fairford, England, United Kingdom would travel a Great Circle distance of 10 miles (or 16 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 relatively short distance between RAF Brize Norton and RAF Fairford, the route shown on this map most likely still appears to be a straight line.

Departure Airport Information:

Arrival Airport Information:

Facts about RAF Brize Norton (BZZ):

• By March 2011, 70 buildings had been refurbished on the station.
• Royal Air Force Brize Norton or RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, about 65 mi west north-west of London, is the largest station of the Royal Air Force.
• By 1950 the USAF Strategic Air Command was based at RAF Lakenheath, RAF Marham, and RAF Sculthorpe.
• The closest airport to RAF Brize Norton (BZZ) is RAF Fairford (FFD), which is located only 10 miles (16 kilometers) WSW of BZZ.
• During the 2003 Iraq War four anti-war protesters managed to access the main runway in an attempt to prevent aircraft taking off.
• By the end of June 2011 all flying units from RAF Lyneham had moved to RAF Brize Norton.
• With the closure of RAF Lyneham taking place in late 2011, the repatriation of British personnel was relocated to Brize Norton on 8 September 2011.
• The furthest airport from RAF Brize Norton (BZZ) is Dunedin International Airport (DUD), which is located 11,888 miles (19,132 kilometers) away in Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand.
• Major infrastructure redevelopment began in 2010 ahead of the closure of RAF Lyneham in 2012, at which point Brize Norton became the sole air point of embarkation for British troops.

Facts about RAF Fairford (FFD):

• The closest airport to RAF Fairford (FFD) is RAF Brize Norton (BZZ), which is located only 10 miles (16 kilometers) ENE of FFD.
• Fairford was chosen in 1969 as the British test centre for the Concorde aircraft, which continued until 1977.
• In the early years of the Cold War the British and American governments reached an agreement under which elements of the USAF Strategic Air Command would be based in the UK.
• Due to the deteriorating airfield facilities and its unique NATO heavy bomber mission, RAF Fairford underwent a $100 million upgrade of its runway and fuel systems in the largest NATO funded airfield construction project within a NATO country since the end of the Cold War.
• On 14 January 2004, the 420th Air Base Group was established at RAF Fairford to improve the control of its geographically separated units that had been aligned beneath the 100th Air Refueling Wing at RAF Mildenhall.
• The furthest airport from RAF Fairford (FFD) is Dunedin International Airport (DUD), which is located 11,898 miles (19,148 kilometers) away in Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand.
• The runway was completed in 1953, and served as a forward airbase for the first Convair B-36 Peacemaker aircraft from Carswell Air Force Base, Texas.