Flight time
The non-stop flight from New York, United States to Los Angeles, United States takes about 5h 40m in the air, covering roughly 3,936 km. Here is the distance, the time difference, and what your body clock will read on arrival.
Counting only time in the air, New York to Los Angeles is about 5h 40m non-stop. That figure comes from the 3,936-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 3 hours behind New York (-03:00 relative to the origin). Flying westbound, that offset hides part of the apparent trip length: the 5h 40m you spend in the air looks shorter on the arrival clock. When the wheels touch down, your body is still on New York 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 3 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 3,936 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 New York-Los Angeles flights often track far north or south of where the map suggests. Real flown distance is a touch longer, around 4,172 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
23h
New York to Los Angeles · 3,936 km great-circle
Flying west, the destination clock is 3h behind. So a 23h flight seems to only take 20h on the wall. When you land, your body still thinks it is 09:00 back in New York.