How far is Melbourne from Vientiane? Here's the quick answer if you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line.
Flight distance: 4,723 miles or 7600 km
Flight time: 9 hours, 57 minutes
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.
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.
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: Wattay International Airport (VTE)
Arrival airport: Melbourne Airport (MEL)
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: 9 minutes
Getting to your destination: 36 minutes
Now finally, let's look at an actual flight from VTE connecting through BKK and arriving at MEL flying on Thai Airways International. 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: 1 hour, 8 minutes
Connecting airport: Suvarnabhumi Airport (BKK)
Connection flight time: 9 hours, 35 minutes
So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Vientiane to Melbourne 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: 15 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 Melbourne, Australia. Start by reading the Trippy page on where to stay in Melbourne. A great place to eat might be The Lui Bar. Trippy members can suggest things to do in Melbourne like Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. Check out some of the questions people have asked about Melbourne like What's the best neighborhood in Melbourne for a first time visitor?. Click the button below to explore Melbourne in detail.
The distance is the same either way if you're flying a straight line. But for a real trip, there can be plenty of differences so go ahead and check the reverse directions to get the distance from Melbourne to Vientiane, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.
If you happen to know Vientiane, don't forget to help other travelers and answer some questions about Vientiane!