Nonstop flight route between Lakenheath, England, United Kingdom and Pico Island, Azores, Portugal:

About this route:

A direct, nonstop flight between RAF Lakenheath (LKZ), Lakenheath, England, United Kingdom and Pico Airport (PIX), Pico Island, Azores, Portugal would travel a Great Circle distance of 1,682 miles (or 2,707 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 Lakenheath and Pico 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 Lakenheath (LKZ):

• The furthest airport from RAF Lakenheath (LKZ) is Chatham Islands (CHT), which is located 11,827 miles (19,034 kilometers) away in Waitangi, Chatham Islands, New Zealand.
• The closest airport to RAF Lakenheath (LKZ) is RAF Mildenhall (MHZ), which is located only 4 miles (7 kilometers) SW of LKZ.
• The first use of Lakenheath Warren as a Royal Flying Corps airfield was in World War I, when the area was made into a bombing and ground-attack range for aircraft flying from elsewhere in the area.
• Following French president Charles de Gaulle's insistence in 1959 that all non-French nuclear-capable forces should be withdrawn from his country, the USAF began a redeployment of its North American F-100-equipped units from France.
• By the time construction ended the war with Germany was over and RAF Lakenheath was put on a care and maintenance status.
• On 1 May 1951, Lakenheath was transferred from USAFE to SAC, and placed under the 3909th Air Base Group.
• Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union in Europe began as early as 1946.
• In early 1943, three T-2 hangars were erected on the north side of the airfield for glider storage, 40 Horsa Gliders being dispersed at Lakenheath during that year.
• The work entailed removal of the existing runways and laying new ones comprising 12 inches of high-grade concrete.

Facts about Pico Airport (PIX):

• The closest airport to Pico Airport (PIX) is Horta International Airport (HOR), which is located only 15 miles (24 kilometers) W of PIX.
• The furthest airport from Pico Airport (PIX) is Merimbula Airport (MIM), which is nearly antipodal to Pico Airport (meaning Pico Airport is almost on the exact opposite side of the Earth from Merimbula Airport), and is located 12,291 miles (19,781 kilometers) away in Merimbula, New South Wales, Australia.
• Managed by SATA Gestão de Aeródromos, it has an 1,754 metres operational runway, with a width of 45 metres.
• Pico Airport (PIX) currently has only 1 runway.
• The first studies were completed to construct a runway for the remote island of Pico during the post-War era when, instead, a final decision in 1946 saw the construction of an aerodrome on the island of Faial.
• Because of Pico Airport's relatively low elevation of 112 feet, planes can take off or land at Pico 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 "Pico Airport", another name for PIX is "Aeroporto do Pico".