Flight Arrival Time Calculator

How the Flight Arrival Time Calculator works

Airline schedules show departure and arrival in each airport's local time, which is exactly what you need at the gate and exactly what confuses everyone else. A 13-hour flight that leaves at 11:00 can land at 08:50 the next morning, while a 10-hour flight can land before the clock time it took off. Working that out by hand means knowing both cities' offsets from UTC on that date, including any daylight saving change.

How the flight arrival time calculator works

The departure time is read as local time in the departure city and converted to an exact instant using that city's real time zone rules on that date. The flight time is added to that instant, and the result is shown as local time in the arrival city. The rows are:

• Arrives gives the local date, time and zone abbreviation at the destination.
• Departs repeats your departure in local time as a check.
• Flight time is the duration you entered.
• Clocks change by is how far the destination clock is ahead of or behind the departure clock.
• Local clock difference is how far the local time moves between take-off and landing.
• Calendar appears when you land on a different date from the one you left.
• Arrival in home time shows the landing time on the clock back at the departure city, which is useful for telling people at home when to expect a message.

Worked examples

London to Tokyo, leaving at 11:00 on Monday 5 October 2026 with a flight time of 13h 50m, lands at 08:50 on Tuesday 6 October in Tokyo. Tokyo is 8 hours ahead of London in British Summer Time, so the local clock moves 21h 50m, and the arrival is 00:50 in London.

Tokyo to Los Angeles, leaving at 17:00 on 5 October with a 10-hour flight, lands at 11:00 the same day. The clocks go back 16 hours, so you arrive six hours, by the clock, before you left. Flights east across the international date line are the only way to land on an earlier clock time than the one you departed at.

Daylight saving and the in-between weeks

Countries change their clocks on different dates, and some never change. Europe moves its clocks on the last Sundays of March and October, while the United States and Canada change on the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November. For a week or two each year the usual gap shrinks or grows by an hour. On 30 October 2026, London is already back on GMT while New York is still on daylight time, so New York is 4 hours behind instead of the usual 5. The calculator uses the real rules for both cities on your travel date, so these weeks are handled.

If you pick a departure time that does not exist because the clocks went forward that night, it is read with the offset from before the change, so it lands an hour later on the clock. A time that happens twice when the clocks go back is read as the first of the two.

Where to find the flight time

Airline timetables and booking confirmations list the scheduled duration, sometimes called block time. Block time runs from pushback at the gate to arrival at the gate, including taxiing, and is padded to absorb typical delays. The real time in the air is usually shorter. Flights in the same direction can vary by an hour or more because of jet streams: flying east across the Atlantic or Pacific with the wind is often noticeably faster than the return.

Practical tips

• Use the city whose clock the airport follows. The zone list uses the IANA names, such as America/New_York for all of US Eastern time.
• Add your connection time when calculating a multi-leg journey, or calculate each leg in turn with the previous arrival as the next departure.
• Check the arrival date before booking a hotel or a car. An overnight eastbound flight often lands the day after you leave.
• Arrange airport pick-ups with the Arrival time, not the departure clock, and give people back home the home-time row.

Time zone data

The time zone rules come from the IANA database built into your browser, the same data used by phones and computers. Every IANA zone is offered when your browser supports it, with a short list of major cities as a fallback for older browsers.

How many hours the clocks change on arrival

The formula is local arrival = departure time + flight duration, read in the destination's time zone. For example, an 8-hour flight leaving London at 10:00 on Monday 5 October 2026 lands in Tokyo at 02:00 on Tuesday, because Tokyo is 8 hours ahead. Each example below uses the same departure.

Arrival times for an 8-hour flight leaving London at 10:00 on 5 October 2026

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