📏 Alexandria to Abuja

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3,382 km · 2,102 mi
Great-circle (haversine, R = 6371.0088 km)3,382.2 km
Miles (international)2,101.6 mi
Nautical miles1,826.3 nmi
Initial true bearing228.1° SW
Flight at 900 km/h (no climb, taxi or wind)225 min
Drive at 80 km/h, non-stop42.3 h
Latitude change-22.1400°
Longitude change-22.4300°
ℹ️ What this tool does & how it works

The air line between the two is 3,382 km (2,102 statute miles, 1,826 nautical miles). It comes from the haversine formula on the two coordinate pairs the page carries — Alexandria at 31.2000° N, 29.9200° E and Abuja at 9.0600° N, 7.4900° E — using the IUGG mean Earth radius of 6371.0088 km. Leaving Alexandria toward Abuja you start on a true bearing of 228.1° (SW); because the Earth curves, that heading drifts as you go.

How the Alexandria and Abuja distance is worked out

Two points on a sphere are separated by the shorter arc of the great circle that passes through both of them, and the haversine formula is the numerically stable way to get its length: it converts the latitude difference and the longitude difference into a single chord ratio, takes its square root, and multiplies by twice the radius. Written that way it stays accurate even for pairs a few kilometres apart, which is why it is still the standard in navigation code. The radius used here is 6371.0088 km, the IUGG mean radius; on the true WGS84 ellipsoid the same Alexandria–Abuja arc differs by a few tenths of a per cent depending on the route's orientation, which is well inside the error of a city-centre coordinate.

What that number means for an actual trip

It is the distance a bird flies. A 3,382 km line becomes roughly 4,397 km of road once hills, borders, river crossings and bypasses are counted — the 1.2 to 1.4 multiplier is the usual empirical range, and this page does not pretend to know the road you would take. Air distance is closer to the figure above, though airline routings, wind and holding add time to the 225 minutes a perfect 900 km/h cruise would take. Rail sits between the two. The latitude and longitude changes in the table show why the line is not simply "north" or "east": a 22.14° shift in latitude is about 2,460 km, while the same number of degrees in longitude shrinks with the cosine of the latitude.

Both positions, exactly

Alexandria, Egypt (Africa): 31° 11′ 60.0″ N, 29° 55′ 12.0″ E — decimal 31.2, 29.92, GeoHash stt32zg14. Abuja, Nigeria (Africa): 9° 03′ 36.0″ N, 7° 29′ 24.0″ E — decimal 9.06, 7.49, GeoHash s1t7d3q43. Those two pairs are all this page needs, and everything above is derived from them; nothing is fetched, and the coordinates you can edit in the form are recalculated by your own browser, so a different pair costs nothing and stays on your device.

Part of Everyday Tools. Like everything on tukuk.org: free, no account, no tracking.

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