King Phalo Airport
East London, South Africa — flight times and distances to airports around the world, computed from published coordinates.
SOURCE·OurAirports + great-circle computation·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How this is worked out
- Both airports' coordinates come from OurAirports, a public-domain dataset — nothing is scraped from another flight site.
- Distance is a great-circle (haversine) figure on a mean earth radius of 6,371.0088 km, so it is the shortest path over the surface, not a road distance.
- Airborne time is that distance divided by 805 km/h, a representative jet cruise speed.
- A flat 25 minutes is added for pushback, taxi, climb, descent and taxi-in, which is why no hop is ever half an hour gate to gate.
- Winds, aircraft type and airline schedule padding are not modelled, and every route page shows the same distance at four cruise speeds so you can see what that assumption is worth.
gate-to-gate hours = 0.42 + distance km / 805
SOURCE·OurAirports + great-circle computation·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Flight times from ELS to the nearest major hubs
Great-circle distance and estimated flight time to the closest large international airports — the realistic connecting points from East London.
| Hub | Code | Distance | Flight time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Durban, South Africa | DUR | 492 km | 1h 02m |
| Johannesburg, South Africa | JNB | 768 km | 1h 22m |
| Cape Town, South Africa | CPT | 861 km | 1h 29m |
| Plaine Magnien, Mauritius | MRU | 3,264 km | 4h 28m |
| Nairobi, Kenya | NBO | 3,653 km | 4h 57m |
| Victoria, Seychelles | SEZ | 4,264 km | 5h 43m |
| Addis Ababa, Ethiopia | ADD | 4,814 km | 6h 24m |
| Lagos, Nigeria | LOS | 5,109 km | 6h 46m |
| Abuja, Nigeria | ABV | 5,157 km | 6h 50m |
| Accra, Ghana | ACC | 5,213 km | 6h 54m |
SOURCE·OurAirports + great-circle computation·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Questions about ELS
What is the airport code for East London?
King Phalo Airport uses the IATA code ELS and the ICAO code FAEL. IATA codes are the three-letter ones on your boarding pass; ICAO codes are four letters and used by air traffic control.
Where is King Phalo Airport?
It sits at 33.0356° S, 27.8259° E, serving East London in South Africa, at an elevation of 435 feet.
Data from OurAirports (public domain) · Wikipedia. Flight times are great-circle estimates for planning only — always check the airline's published schedule.
