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Distance between Tucson and San Antonio

Driving non-stop from Tucson to San Antonio

How far is San Antonio from Tucson? 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: 868 miles or 1397 km

Driving time: 12 hours, 18 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 Tucson to San Antonio

Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Tucson, Arizona and San Antonio, Texas. 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: 766 miles or 1233 km

Flight time: 2 hours, 2 minutes

The straight line flight distance is 102 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 1/6th of the time it would take to drive.

This is a medium length flight, so unless you have a nice private jet, 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.





Tucson to San Antonio road trip

Let's say you're actually planning a road trip to San Antonio, and you want to stop along the way to rest. If it's a real road trip, you might want to check out interesting stops along the way, eat at great restaurants, and maybe even 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 more than one day.

Road trip: 2 days of driving

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

Travel time: 14 hours on the road with 1 overnight


Itinerary

Start in Tucson.

Drive for about 2 hours, then stop at Chiricahua National Monument and stay for about 1 hour. Next, drive for another 2 hours then stop in Deming and stay for 1 hour. Drive for 1.5 hours then stop in El Paso and stay for 1 hour. Drive for 1.5 hours then stop in Van Horn. Stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 1.5 hours, then stop in Fort Stockton and stay for about 1 hour. Next, drive for another 2 hours then stop in Sonora (Texas) and stay for 1 hour. Drive for 1.5 hours then stop in Fredericksburg (Texas) and stay for 1 hour.

Finally, drive for about 1 hour and arrive in San Antonio.


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:





Tucson to San Antonio 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: Tucson International Airport (TUS)

Arrival airport: San Antonio International Airport (SAT)

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: 23 minutes

Getting to your destination: 22 minutes

Now finally, let's look at an example flight from TUS to SAT 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: 2 hours, 2 minutes

So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Tucson to San Antonio 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: 5 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 Antonio

Trippy has a ton of information that can help you plan your trip to San Antonio, Texas. Start by reading the Trippy page on where to stay in San Antonio. If you're looking for a place to stay, you might want to check out Hilton Palacio del Rio. A great place to eat might be Mi Tierra Cafe y Panaderia. Trippy members can suggest things to do in San Antonio like Riverwalk. Check out some of the questions people have asked about San Antonio like Best free things to do in San Antonio?. Click the button below to explore San Antonio 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 Antonio to Tucson, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.

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





At a Glance
without making any stops
total driving distance is 868 miles
driving time of 12 hours, 18 minutes
flight distance is 766 miles
flight time of 2 hours, 2 minutes
San Antonio is 2 hours ahead of Tucson
90 Tucson travel answers
122 San Antonio travel answers








   
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