Flying non-stop from Dallas to Houston
Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in thefastest possible straight line between Dallas, Texas andHouston, Texas. Because of the curvature of the Earth, theshortest distance is actually the "great circle" distance, or"as the crow flies" which is calculated using an iterativeVincenty formula.
Flight distance: 224 miles or 361 km
Flight time: 42 minutes
The straight line flight distance is 15 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 1/4th 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 toinclude how many minutes to get to your local airport, waitfor security, board and taxi on the runway, land at the otherairport, and get to your destination. Scroll down to see a more realistic calculation that takesinto account all these factors to get a more accurate estimateof your actual flight time.
Dallas to Houston road trip
Let's say you're actually planning a road trip to Houston, 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 estimateyour total travel time for this trip.
Travel time: 13 hours on the road with 1 overnight
Itinerary
Start in Dallas.
Drive for about 54 minutes, then stop in Corsicana and stay for about 1 hour.Next, drive for another 9 hours then stop in Teague (Texas). Stay overnight.
The next day, drive for about 1 hour, then stop at Buc-ee's and stay for about 1 hour.Next, drive for another 1 hour then stop in Conroe and stay for 1 hour.
Finally, drive for about 46 minutes and arrive in Houston.
To see all the details on this itinerary, includingrecommended restaurants, hotels, and things to do alongthe way, check out the full road trip planner:
Dallas to Houston airports and flights
In the quick calculation above, we assumed you had a privateplane 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 needto 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'veput together a flight itinerary with actual airports. Eventuallyyou'll be able to customize this plan, choosing your own airportsand flights. But for now, here's an example we've selected togive you an idea of how traveling might work between airports.
Departure airport: Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW)
Arrival airport: George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH)
With the airports selected, we can estimate the travel time to andfrom the airport, based on how far the airport is from downtown.
Getting to the airport: 49 minutes
Getting to your destination: 47 minutes
Now finally, let's look at an actual flight from DFW to IAH on American Airlines and figure out how long it would take to fly includingtake-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 fromDallas to Houston including time spent getting to/fromthe airports, an estimated wait time of 2 hours at the airport for TSAsecurity lines and waiting at the gate, and the actual flight itself.
Total travel time: 5 hours
To see the details on this flight plan, includingrecommended airports, airline, and route, check outthe flight planner:
Plan a trip to Houston
Trippy has a ton of information that can help you plan your trip to Houston, Texas. Start by reading the Trippy page on where to stay in Houston. If you're looking for a place to stay, you might want to check out Hotel ZaZa. A great place to eat might be Uchi. Trippy members can suggest things to do in Houston like Houston Galleria. Check out some of the questions people have asked about Houston like Best Mexican restaurants in town?. Click the button below to explore Houston 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 differencesso go ahead and check the reverse directions to get thedistance from Houston to Dallas, or go to the main pageto calculate the distance between cities.
If you happen to know Dallas, don't forget to help othertravelers and answer some questions about Dallas!
