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Distance between Santa Monica and San Diego

Driving non-stop from Santa Monica to San Diego

How far is San Diego from Santa Monica? Here's the quick answer if you drive this relatively short distance without making any stops.

Nonstop drive: 134 miles or 216 km

Driving time: 2 hours, 8 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.


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Flying non-stop from Santa Monica to San Diego

Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Santa Monica, California and San Diego, 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.

Flight distance: 118 miles or 190 km

Flight time: 32 minutes

The straight line flight distance is 16 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 1/2th 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.





Santa Monica to San Diego road trip

Let's say you're actually planning a road trip to San Diego, 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: 3 hours on the road


Itinerary

Start in Santa Monica.

Drive for about 1 hour, then stop in Laguna Beach and stay for about 1.5 hours. Next, drive for another 47 minutes then stop in Carlsbad (California) and stay for 1 hour. Drive for 48 minutes then stop at Balboa Park and stay for 1 hour.

Finally, drive for about 5 minutes and arrive in San Diego.


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:





Santa Monica to San Diego 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: Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)

Arrival airport: San Diego International Airport (SAN)

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: 6 minutes

Now finally, let's look at an actual flight from LAX to SAN on Delta Air Lines and figure out how long it would take to fly including take-off and landing, and time to taxi on the runway.

Commercial flight time: 55 minutes

So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Santa Monica to San Diego including time spent getting to/from the airports, an estimated wait time of 2 hours at the airport for TSA security lines and waiting at the gate, and the actual flight itself.

Total travel time: 3 hours


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





Plan a trip to San Diego

Trippy has a ton of information that can help you plan your trip to San Diego, California. Start by reading the Trippy page on where to stay in San Diego. If you're looking for a place to stay, you might want to check out Hotel Del Coronado. A great place to eat might be The Prado at Balboa Park. Trippy members can suggest things to do in San Diego like Balboa Park. Check out some of the questions people have asked about San Diego like LOCATION. Click the button below to explore San Diego 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 San Diego to Santa Monica, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.

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





At a Glance
without making any stops
total driving distance is 134 miles
driving time of 2 hours, 8 minutes
flight distance is 118 miles
flight time of 32 minutes
229 Santa Monica travel answers
288 San Diego travel answers








   
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