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Distance between Philadelphia and Los Angeles

Driving non-stop from Philadelphia to Los Angeles

How far is Los Angeles from Philadelphia? Here's the quick answer if you have friends taking shifts as driver so that you can make the entire trip by car without stopping.

Nonstop drive: 2,741 miles or 4411 km

Driving time: 39 hours, 52 minutes

This is a really long drive, so it's not very realistic to drive nonstop. To get a better idea of how long this road trip would actually take, scroll down to calculate how many hours it would be if you drive with stops.


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Flying non-stop from Philadelphia to Los Angeles

Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Los Angeles, California. 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. For a long distance, this appears as a curve on the map, and this is often the route that commercial airlines will take so it's a good estimate of the frequent flyer miles you'll accumulate as well.

Flight distance: 2,393 miles or 3852 km

Flight time: 5 hours, 13 minutes

The straight line flight distance is 348 miles less than driving on roads, which means the driving distance is roughly 1.1x of the flight distance.

Your plane flies much faster than a car, so the flight time is about 1/7th of the time it would take to drive.

This is a fairly long flight, so unless you have a Gulfstream G650 or your own Boeing or Airbus, you might be booking 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.





Philadelphia to Los Angeles road trip

Realistically, you're not going to want to drive without stopping all the way from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, especially if you're the main driver. So let's say you're actually planning a road trip to Los Angeles, and you need to stop along the way to rest. Plus if it's a real road trip, you might want to check out interesting stops along the way, eat at great restaurants, and find a hotel to stay overnight. That's what Trippy is perfect for, helping you figure out travel plans in detail.

Based on the length of this trip, we think you could spread out this fun road trip over a number of days.

Road trip: 6 days of driving

With the full itinerary planned out, we can estimate your total travel time for this trip.

Travel time: 43.5 hours on the road with 5 overnights


Itinerary

Start in Philadelphia.

Drive for about 4.5 hours, then stop at Fallingwater and stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 7 hours, then stop in Indianapolis and stay for about 1.5 hours. Next, drive for another 4 hours then stop in St. Louis. Stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 6 hours, then stop in Tulsa and stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 9 hours, then stop in Albuquerque and stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 5.5 hours, then stop in Sedona and stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 3 hours, then stop in Kingman and stay for about 1 hour.

Finally, drive for about 5 hours and arrive in Los Angeles.


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:





Philadelphia to Los Angeles airports and flights

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: Philadelphia International Airport (PHL)

Arrival airport: Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)

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: 22 minutes

Getting to your destination: 36 minutes

Now finally, let's look at an actual flight from PHL connecting through ATL and arriving at LAX flying on Frontier Airlines. 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: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL)

Connection flight time: 4 hours, 48 minutes

So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Philadelphia to Los Angeles 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: 12 hours


To see the details on this flight plan, including recommended airports, airline, and route, check out the flight planner:





Plan a trip to Los Angeles

Trippy has a ton of information that can help you plan your trip to Los Angeles, California. Start by reading the Trippy page on where to stay in Los Angeles, or find out how many days in Los Angeles to visit. If you're looking for a place to stay, you might want to check out Shutters On the Beach. A great place to eat might be Gjelina. Trippy members can suggest things to do in Los Angeles like Santa Monica Pier. Check out some of the questions people have asked about Los Angeles like Where are the top 5 places to see a celebrity in L.A.?. Click the button below to explore Los Angeles in detail.





How far is it the other way?

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 Los Angeles to Philadelphia, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.

If you happen to know Philadelphia, don't forget to help other travelers and answer some questions about Philadelphia!





At a Glance
without making any stops
total driving distance is 2,741 miles
driving time of 39 hours, 52 minutes
flight distance is 2,393 miles
flight time of 5 hours, 13 minutes
Los Angeles is 3 hours behind Philadelphia
135 Philadelphia travel answers
648 Los Angeles travel answers








   
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