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How far are capital cities from their nearest airport?

The straight-line distance from 201 national-capital points to the nearest airport with scheduled passenger service — and where that airport is across a border.

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How far are capital cities from their nearest airport?

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Key findings

  1. 1

    Half of the 201 capital-city points are within 12.0 km of an airport with scheduled passenger service.

    How we calculated this: Median great-circle distance from each Natural Earth national-capital point to its nearest dataset airport.

  2. 2

    165 of them (82%) are within 20 km, and 197 (98%) within 50 km.

    How we calculated this: Count of capital points whose nearest dataset airport is within 20 km and 50 km.

  3. 3

    Among capitals whose country has an airport in the data, the farthest from one is Yamoussoukro (Côte d'Ivoire): 105 km from Bouaké Airport (BYK).

    How we calculated this: Maximum nearest-airport distance, excluding capitals of countries with no dataset airport.

  4. 4

    Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo) is the only capital in a country with airports whose nearest airport is across a border: Maya-Maya International Airport (BZV, Republic of the Congo), 11 km away.

    How we calculated this: Capitals whose nearest dataset airport has a different ISO country code, among countries with at least one dataset airport.

  5. 5

    6 capitals are in countries with no airport in the data — Kyiv, Vaduz, Andorra, Monaco, Vatican City, San Marino — so their nearest is abroad. For most this reflects a very small country; for others it is the scheduled-service flag in OurAirports, which can mark every airport in a country as without scheduled flights.

    How we calculated this: Capitals whose country has no airport that is large or medium, flagged for scheduled service and IATA-coded in OurAirports.

  6. 6

    London (United Kingdom) has the most choice: 5 airports with scheduled service within 50 km of its centre point.

    How we calculated this: Maximum count of dataset airports within 50 km of a capital point (ties by name).

Chart

Capitals farthest from an airport with scheduled flights (top 20, countries with airports in the data)(km)
  1. Yamoussoukro105 km
  2. Belmopan
  3. Mbabane
  4. Dakar
  5. Paramaribo
  6. Pretoria
  7. Jerusalem
  8. Oslo
  9. Riyadh
  10. Islamabad
  11. Port Louis
  12. Kampala
  13. Muscat
  14. Minsk
  15. Ulaanbaatar
  16. Abuja
  17. Apia
  18. Abu Dhabi
  19. Moscow
  20. Sucre26 km

Distribution

Capital-city points by distance to the nearest airport with scheduled flights(capitals)
  1. 0–10 km85
  2. 10–20 km
  3. 20–30 km
  4. 30–50 km
  5. 50–100 km
  6. over 100 km2

The data

The 20 capital-city points farthest from an airport with scheduled passenger service, in countries with at least one such airport
RankCapitalCountryNearest airportDistance
1YamoussoukroCôte d'IvoireBouaké Airport (BYK)105 km (65 mi)
2BelmopanBelizePhilip S. W. Goldson International Airport (BZE)59 km (36 mi)
3MbabaneEswatiniKing Mswati III International Airport (SHO)58 km (36 mi)
4DakarSenegalBlaise Diagne International Airport (DSS)44 km (27 mi)
5ParamariboSurinameJohan Adolf Pengel International Airport (PBM)43 km (26 mi)
6PretoriaSouth AfricaLanseria International Airport (HLA)40 km (25 mi)
7JerusalemIsraelBen Gurion International Airport (TLV)40 km (25 mi)
8OsloNorwayOslo-Gardermoen International Airport (OSL)36 km (23 mi)
9RiyadhSaudi ArabiaKing Khalid International Airport (RUH)36 km (22 mi)
10IslamabadPakistanIslamabad International Airport (ISB)36 km (22 mi)
11Port LouisMauritiusSir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport (MRU)35 km (22 mi)
12KampalaUgandaEntebbe International Airport (EBB)34 km (21 mi)
13MuscatOmanMuscat International Airport (MCT)31 km (20 mi)
14MinskBelarusMinsk National Airport (MSQ)31 km (19 mi)
15UlaanbaatarMongoliaUlaanbaatar Chinggis Khaan International Airport (UBN)31 km (19 mi)
16AbujaNigeriaNnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (ABV)31 km (19 mi)
17ApiaSamoaFaleolo International Airport (APW)29 km (18 mi)
18Abu DhabiUnited Arab EmiratesZayed International Airport (AUH)29 km (18 mi)
19MoscowRussiaVnukovo International Airport (VKO)29 km (18 mi)
20SucreBoliviaAlcantarí International Airport (SRE)26 km (16 mi)

Methodology

  • Capitals: the 201 populated places Natural Earth v5.1.2 marks as a national (Admin-0) capital. Some countries have more than one such point (Côte d'Ivoire, South Africa, Bolivia, Myanmar); each is measured separately.
  • Airports: airports with scheduled passenger service and an IATA code, classified large or medium in OurAirports (3,244 airports, retrieved 2026-10-18).
  • Distance: great-circle (haversine) from Natural Earth’s point for the city — roughly its centre — to each airport’s reference point, on a sphere of mean radius 6,371.0088 km.
  • Airports in any country count, so a nearer airport across a border is the nearest.

Limitations

  • A single point stands for a whole city; distances from a particular address can be quite different.
  • Straight-line distance is not road distance or travel time.
  • The scheduled-service flag is community-maintained and can lag reality in both directions; it does not say which airlines fly or how often.
  • Natural Earth’s capital flags follow its own conventions, which can differ from a country’s constitutional definition of its capital.

Download the data

Every row behind this analysis (201 rows), as CSV. Derived from the public-domain datasets listed below; please cite AMZBooking Research when you use it.

capital-cities-nearest-airport.csv

Sources & methodology

Distances are great-circle between airport reference points, not flight distances or times. How we calculate · Report an error

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