How far is Lexington from Cincinnati? Here's the quick answer if you drive this relatively short distance without making any stops.
Nonstop drive: 98 miles or 158 km
Driving time: 1 hour, 37 minutes
Even though you can drive this distance straight through, it might be more interesting to stop along the way. You can scroll down to calculate how many hours it would take if you drive with stops.
Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Cincinnati, Ohio and Lexington, Kentucky. Because of the curvature of the Earth, the shortest distance is actually the "great circle" distance, or "as the crow flies" which is calculated using an iterative Vincenty formula.
Flight distance: 73 miles or 118 km
Flight time: 39 minutes
The straight line flight distance is 25 miles less than driving on roads, which means the driving distance is roughly 1.3x of the flight distance.
Your plane flies much faster than a car, so the flight time is about 1/3th of the time it would take to drive.
This is a relatively short flight in a private plane, but you might be planning to book a commercial flight. In that case, your travel time would really need to include how many minutes to get to your local airport, wait for security, board and taxi on the runway, land at the other airport, and get to your destination. Scroll down to see a more realistic calculation that takes into account all these factors to get a more accurate estimate of your actual flight time.
Let's say you're actually planning a road trip to Lexington, and you want to stop on the way to explore. If it's a real road trip, you might want to check out interesting places along the way, or maybe eat at a great restaurant. That's what Trippy is perfect for, helping you figure out travel plans in detail.
Road trip: 1 day of driving
With the full itinerary planned out, we can estimate your total travel time for this trip.
Travel time: 2.5 hours on the road
Itinerary
Start in Cincinnati.
Drive for about 29 minutes, then stop in Hebron (Kentucky) and stay for about 1 hour.
Next, drive for another 23 minutes then stop in Walton and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 15 minutes then stop in Crittenden (Kentucky) and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 16 minutes then stop in Williamstown (Kentucky) and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 15 minutes then stop in Corinth (Kentucky) and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 17 minutes then stop in Sadieville (Kentucky) and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 19 minutes then stop in Georgetown (Kentucky) and stay for 1 hour.
Finally, drive for about 29 minutes and arrive in Lexington.
To see all the details on this itinerary, including recommended restaurants, hotels, and things to do along the way, check out the full road trip planner:
In the quick calculation above, we assumed you had a private plane and just wanted to know the time in the air from city to city. But for most of us, we're going to be flying on a commercial airline (whether it's first class or coach). So that means we really need to account for all the extra travel time getting to the airport, waiting for our flight, and making it to the destination.
To give you a better estimate of real-life travel, we've put together a flight itinerary with actual airports. Eventually you'll be able to customize this plan, choosing your own airports and flights. But for now, here's an example we've selected to give you an idea of how traveling might work between airports.
Departure airport: Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG)
Arrival airport: Blue Grass Airport (LEX)
With the airports selected, we can estimate the travel time to and from the airport, based on how far the airport is from downtown.
Getting to the airport: 26 minutes
Getting to your destination: 17 minutes
Now finally, let's look at an actual flight from CVG connecting through PGD and arriving at LEX flying on Allegiant Air LLC. We can figure out how long it would take to fly including take-off and landing, time to taxi on the runways, and an average layover time of about 2 hours.
Initial flight time: 2 hours, 12 minutes
Connecting airport: Charlotte County Airport (PGD)
Connection flight time: 2 hours, 4 minutes
So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Cincinnati to Lexington including time spent getting to and from the airports, roughly 2 hours at the departure airport for TSA security lines and waiting at the gate, plus the connecting flight with a 2-hour layover.
Total travel time: 9 hours
To see the details on this flight plan, including recommended airports, airline, and route, check out the flight planner:
Trippy has a ton of information that can help you plan your trip to Lexington, Kentucky. Start by reading the Trippy page on where to stay in Lexington. Check out some of the questions people have asked about Lexington like What is your favorite restaurant in Lexington?. Click the button below to explore Lexington in detail.
The distance is the same either way if you're flying a straight line (or driving the same roads back and forth). But for a real trip, there can be plenty of differences so go ahead and check the reverse directions to get the distance from Lexington to Cincinnati, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.
If you happen to know Cincinnati, don't forget to help other travelers and answer some questions about Cincinnati!