Nonstop flight route between Grand Forks, North Dakota, United States and Queenstown, New Zealand:

About this route:

A direct, nonstop flight between Grand Forks Air Force Base (RDR), Grand Forks, North Dakota, United States and Queenstown Airport (ZQN), Queenstown, New Zealand would travel a Great Circle distance of 8,558 miles (or 13,773 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 Grand Forks Air Force Base and Queenstown 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 Grand Forks Air Force Base and Queenstown 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 Grand Forks Air Force Base (RDR):

• The furthest airport from Grand Forks Air Force Base (RDR) is Margaret River Airport (MGV), which is located 10,504 miles (16,904 kilometers) away in Margaret River, Western Australia, Australia.
• The closest airport to Grand Forks Air Force Base (RDR) is Grand Forks International Airport (GFK), which is located only 10 miles (17 kilometers) E of RDR.
• The 4133d SW was redesignated as the 319th Bombardment Wing on 1 February 1963 in a name-only redesigation and was assigned to SAC's Second Air Force, 810th Strategic Aerospace Division.
• With the restructuring of the Air Force and the disestablishment of SAC in 1992, the wing transferred to Air Combat Command, then came under Air Force Space Command in 1993.
• During the Cold War, GFAFB was a major installation of the Strategic Air Command, with B-52 bombers, KC-135 tankers, and Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles.
• SAGE operations were extremely expansive and GFADS was inactivated on 1 December 1963, when it was merged with the Minot Air Defense Sector at Minot AFB to the west.
• In addition to being known as "Grand Forks Air Force Base", another name for RDR is "Grand Forks AFB".
• On 26 May 1972, President Nixon and Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev signed the ABM Treaty, which limited each nation to one site to protect strategic forces and one site to protect the "National Command Authority." With work about 85 percent complete at Grand Forks, the United States chose to finish construction at the North Dakota site.

Facts about Queenstown Airport (ZQN):

• On 22 June 2010, a late-running Pacific Blue flight to Sydney took off from Queenstown.
• Queenstown Airport (ZQN) has 2 runways.
• The closest airport to Queenstown Airport (ZQN) is Wanaka Airport (WKA), which is located 32 miles (52 kilometers) NE of ZQN.
• The furthest airport from Queenstown Airport (ZQN) is A Coruña Airport (LCG), which is nearly antipodal to Queenstown Airport (meaning Queenstown Airport is almost on the exact opposite side of the Earth from A Coruña Airport), and is located 12,251 miles (19,716 kilometers) away in A Coruña, Spain.
• On 8 July 2010, Auckland International Airport Limited, the operator of Auckland Airport, announced it had entered into an agreement to take a 24.99% shareholding in Queenstown Airport Corporation Limited and form a strategic alliance between the two airports.
• In another separate incident in June 2010 two airliners were found to have had a high potential to have breached the 1000 foot vertical separation required.