How far is chicago to memphis

Driving non-stop from Chicago to Memphis

How far is Memphis from Chicago? Here's the quick answer if you are able to make this entire trip by car without stopping.

Nonstop drive: 532 miles or 856 km

Driving time: 7 hours, 44 minutes

Realistically, you'll probably want to add a buffer for rest stops, gas, or food along the way. To get a better idea of how long this trip would really be, scroll down to calculate how many hours it would take if you drive with stops.

Flying non-stop from Chicago to Memphis

Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Chicago, Illinois and Memphis, Tennessee. 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.

Flight distance: 482 miles or 776 km

Flight time: 1 hour, 19 minutes

The straight line flight distance is 50 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 1/5th 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 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.

Chicago to Memphis road trip

Let's say you're actually planning a road trip to Memphis, 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 estimate your total travel time for this trip.

Travel time: 10 hours on the road with 1 overnight

Itinerary

Start in Chicago.

Drive for about 2 hours, then stop in Champaign and stay for about 1 hour. Next, drive for another 1.5 hours then stop in Altamont and stay for 1 hour. Drive for 1 hour then stop in Mount Vernon (Illinois). Stay overnight.

The next day, drive for about 1 hour, then stop at Cedar Lake and stay for about 1 hour. Next, drive for another 1 hour then stop in Sikeston and stay for 1 hour. Drive for 2 hours then stop in Covington (Tennessee) and stay for 1 hour.

Finally, drive for about 55 minutes and arrive in Memphis.

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:

Chicago to Memphis 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: Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)

Arrival airport: Memphis International Airport (MEM)

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: 47 minutes

Getting to your destination: 25 minutes

Now finally, let's look at an actual flight from ORD to MEM 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: 1 hour, 40 minutes

So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Chicago to Memphis 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: 5 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 Memphis to Chicago, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.

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

How far is Chicago from Memphis flight?

How long is a car ride from Chicago to Memphis?

What city is halfway between Chicago and Memphis?

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