Flight time
The non-stop flight from London, United Kingdom to Los Angeles, United States takes about 11h 54m in the air, covering roughly 8,756 km. Here is the distance, the time difference, and what your body clock will read on arrival.
Counting only time in the air, London to Los Angeles is about 11h 54m non-stop. That figure comes from the 8,756-kilometre great-circle distance — the shortest line over the curve of the Earth — stretched by a small margin for real routing and divided by typical jet cruise speed, with taxi, climb, and descent folded in. On a real schedule the block time can run longer or shorter: headwinds, air-traffic routing, and the specific aircraft all move the number. The westbound leg of a long route into prevailing winds is often the slower of the two directions.
Los Angeles is 8 hours behind London (-08:00 relative to the origin). Flying westbound, that offset hides part of the apparent trip length: the 11h 54m you spend in the air looks shorter on the arrival clock. When the wheels touch down, your body is still on London time — which is exactly the figure the live calculator below shows as the body-clock reading. The gap can shift by an hour around daylight saving transitions, since the two regions rarely change their clocks on the same weekend.
Crossing 8 time zones westbound is enough to feel. As a rule of thumb the body re-syncs about one time zone per day, so plan for a few days of adjustment. Westbound travel — gaining hours, staying up later — is usually the gentler direction. Get evening light at the destination and try to hold off sleep until a local bedtime. For a personalised light, sleep, and meal plan, see the jet lag calculator.
The 8,756 km figure is the great-circle distance, computed with the haversine formula between the two city coordinates. On a flat map it can look like a curve, because the shortest real-world path bows toward the pole rather than following a straight line of latitude — which is why London-Los Angeles flights often track far north or south of where the map suggests. Real flown distance is a touch longer, around 9,281 km here, once airways and weather routing are added. To unwind the time-zone math on your own specific flight, enter the boarding-pass times below.
Enter your real departure and arrival times, each in its own local clock, to strip out the time-zone shift and get the true duration.
True flight time
28h
London to Los Angeles · 8,756 km great-circle
Flying west, the destination clock is 8h behind. So a 28h flight seems to only take 20h on the wall. When you land, your body still thinks it is 14:00 back in London.