How far is Cancun from Phoenix by plane?

Driving non-stop from Phoenix to Cancun

How far is Cancun from Phoenix? Here's the quick answer if you have friends taking shifts as driver so that you can make the entire trip by car without stopping.

Nonstop drive: 2,445 miles or 3935 km

Driving time: 43 hours, 42 minutes

This is a really long drive, so it's not very realistic to drive nonstop. To get a better idea of how long this road trip would actually take, scroll down to calculate how many hours it would be if you drive with stops.

Flying non-stop from Phoenix to Cancun

Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Phoenix, Arizona and Cancun, Mexico. 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.

Flight distance: 1,761 miles or 2834 km

Flight time: 4 hours, 1 minute

The straight line flight distance is 684 miles less than driving on roads, which means the driving distance is roughly 1.4x of the flight distance.

Your plane flies much faster than a car, so the flight time is about 1/11th of the time it would take to drive.

This is a medium length flight, so unless you have a nice private jet, 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.

Phoenix to Cancun road trip

Realistically, you're not going to want to drive without stopping all the way from Phoenix to Cancun, especially if you're the main driver. So let's say you're actually planning a road trip to Cancun, and you need to stop along the way to rest. Plus if it's a real road trip, you might want to check out interesting stops along the way, eat at great restaurants, and 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 a number of days.

Road trip: 6 days of driving

With the full itinerary planned out, we can estimate your total travel time for this trip.

Travel time: 44 hours on the road with 5 overnights

Itinerary

Start in Phoenix.

Drive for about 3 hours, then stop at Kartchner Caverns State Park and stay for about 1 hour. Next, drive for another 6.5 hours then stop at Basílica de Guadalupe. Stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 5.5 hours, then stop in Torreon and stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 6 hours, then stop in Aguascalientes and stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 5.5 hours, then stop in Mexico City and stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 8 hours, then stop in Villahermosa and stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 6.5 hours, then stop in Merida and stay for about 1 hour.

Finally, drive for about 3 hours and arrive in Cancun.

To see all the details on this itinerary, including recommended restaurants, hotels, and things to do along the way, check out the full road trip planner:

Phoenix to Cancun airports and flights

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: Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX)

Arrival airport: Cancún International Airport (CUN)

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: 11 minutes

Getting to your destination: 28 minutes

Now finally, let's look at an actual flight from PHX to CUN on American Airlines and figure out how long it would take to fly including take-off and landing, and time to taxi on the runway.

Commercial flight time: 4 hours, 1 minute

So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Phoenix to Cancun including time spent getting to/from the airports, an estimated wait time of 2 hours at the airport for TSA security lines and waiting at the gate, and the actual flight itself.

Total travel time: 7 hours

To see the details on this flight plan, including recommended airports, airline, and route, check out the flight planner:

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 differences so go ahead and check the reverse directions to get the distance from Cancun to Phoenix, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.

If you happen to know Phoenix, don't forget to help other travelers and answer some questions about Phoenix!

How long is a flight from Cancun to Arizona?

How many hours away is Cancun by plane?

Is Cancun near Arizona?

How long is the flight to Mexico from Arizona?