We calculates the Great-Circle Distance between your departure and arrival airports. This mathematical formula (the Haversine formula) calculates the absolute shortest path across the curvature of the Earth. However, in reality, your aircraft likely flew a longer distance. This is because planes do not fly in perfectly straight lines; they must follow specific air traffic corridors, detour around bad weather, take advantage of jet streams, avoid restricted geopolitical airspace, and follow specific traffic patterns when taking off and landing. Therefore, our calculated distance represents the shortest possible geographical distance, rather than the exact mileage registered by the aircraft's instruments.