Nonstop flight route between Fairford, England, United Kingdom and Charleroi, Wallonia, Belgium:

About this route:

A direct, nonstop flight between RAF Fairford (FFD), Fairford, England, United Kingdom and Brussels South Charleroi Airport (CRL), Charleroi, Wallonia, Belgium would travel a Great Circle distance of 284 miles (or 457 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 Fairford and Brussels South Charleroi Airport, the route shown on this map most likely still appears to be a straight line.

Departure Airport Information:

Arrival Airport Information:

Facts about RAF Fairford (FFD):

• Royal Air Force Fairford or more simply RAF Fairford is a Royal Air Force station in Gloucestershire, England which is currently a standby airfield and therefore not in everyday use.
• 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.
• 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 closest airport to RAF Fairford (FFD) is RAF Brize Norton (BZZ), which is located only 10 miles (16 kilometers) ENE of FFD.
• KC-135 and KC-10 tankers deployed to Fairford supported Operation El Dorado Canyon against Libya in 1986.
• 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.
• Fairford was chosen in 1969 as the British test centre for the Concorde aircraft, which continued until 1977.

Facts about Brussels South Charleroi Airport (CRL):

• Brussels South Charleroi Airport handled 6,516,427 passengers last year.
• Because of Brussels South Charleroi Airport's relatively low elevation of 614 feet, planes can take off or land at Brussels South Charleroi Airport at a lower air speed than at airports located at a higher elevation. This is because the air density is higher closer to sea level than it would otherwise be at higher elevations.
• In addition to being known as "Brussels South Charleroi Airport", another name for CRL is "Aéroport de Charleroi Bruxelles Sud".
• The airport is accessible by the highway from Brussels, Liège or Lille.
• The closest airport to Brussels South Charleroi Airport (CRL) is Brussels Airport (BRU), which is located 31 miles (49 kilometers) N of CRL.
• The first aeronautical activities in Gosselies date back to 1919 as a flying school, then aeronautical maintenance activities the following year.
• Local TEC buses run between the airport and Charleroi railway station.
• The furthest airport from Brussels South Charleroi Airport (CRL) is Chatham Islands (CHT), which is located 11,975 miles (19,272 kilometers) away in Waitangi, Chatham Islands, New Zealand.
• In the 1970s, the Belgian national airline Sabena launched a Liège-Charleroi-London service, but this was soon dropped because of poor results.
• Brussels South Charleroi Airport (CRL) currently has only 1 runway.
• Operations at Brussels-South Charleroi grew in the 1990s, with a new commercial management structure and the arrival of Irish low cost airline Ryanair in 1997, which opened its first continental base at Charleroi a few years later.