Airport Distance

Overview

Supply two airport IATA codes to calculate the great-circle route distance in statute miles and kilometers together with estimated flight duration. Paid plans can query by four-letter ICAO codes and receive extra flight parameters, including nautical miles, initial compass bearing, timezone differences, passenger carbon estimates, and airport coordinates.

Live Test Airport Distance Source →

Formula

One function covers the whole catalog: the first argument names the source, the rest are its inputs, and the "field" pair says which single value lands in the cell. Formulas covers the grammar that applies to all of them.

=VERVE("airportdistance", A2, B2, "field", "distanceMiles")

=VERVE.CALL("airportdistance", A2, B2, "field", "distanceMiles")

A2 holds iata1, B2 holds iata2. Arguments go in that order — the same order as the table below.

With literal values

Nothing has to come from a cell — typed values work the same way.

=VERVE("airportdistance", "JFK", "LAX", "field", "distanceMiles")

=VERVE.CALL("airportdistance", "JFK", "LAX", "field", "distanceMiles")

Inputs

Required inputs are positional, in the order below. Everything else is passed as a "name", value pair after them — the same shape as SUMIFS. Premium inputs are accepted on every plan but only take effect on plans that include them.

What lands in your sheet

The "field" pair is what makes the formula resolve to one cell. Its value is a dot-path from the table below, so swapping it is how you pull a different value — one formula per column.

Seeing everything at once

Drop the "field" pair and the formula returns the whole response instead: two columns, field name on the left and value on the right, spilling from the cell you typed in.

=VERVE("airportdistance", A2, B2)

=VERVE.CALL("airportdistance", A2, B2)

Response fields

Paths are relative to data. Each one is exactly what the "field" pair accepts, so swapping it is how you pull a different value into a cell. On a plan without a Premium field the cell reads #PREMIUM(field) rather than a value, so a locked field never looks like a real answer.

Filling a whole column

Both platforms make one batched call for a column rather than one request per cell, and both cost the same — 2 credits per row looked up. How you write it differs, because the two runtimes batch at different points.

=VERVE("airportdistance", A2:A100, B2:B100, "field", "distanceMiles")

In Google Sheets, give the arguments ranges and the answers spill down from the cell you typed in. Custom functions there run synchronously and in isolation, so dragged cells cannot be coalesced — the range form is how a column becomes one call. The "field" pair is required here: a per-row two-column table has nowhere to spill. Use a full column per input (A2:A100, not A2) — a single-cell reference is read as row 1 only and the rest of the column comes back blank.

In Excel, type the formula once and fill down — no range form and none needed, because its runtime is asynchronous and the add-in coalesces the calls a fill produces into a single batched request. Do not hand VERVE.CALL a range: Excel flattens it into positional arguments, so A2:A100 arrives as a hundred separate arguments and the cell reads #ERR rather than filling.

Either way, column A holds your iata1 values and the answers land beside them, one row each, blank rows skipped.

When a cell doesn't fill

A failed lookup returns readable text starting with #ERR rather than a spreadsheet error, because Excel cannot show a custom message on a real error — you would get a bare #VALUE! with no reason. The trade-off is that IFERROR() will not catch it; test with LEFT(cell, 4) = "#ERR" instead. Error handling covers the rest.

Before the formula works

The add-in reads the API key you saved once in the side panel — the key never goes in the formula, so a shared sheet does not leak it and a collaborator without access simply sees the last calculated values.

1. Install the add-in for Google Sheets or Excel.
2. Open the side panel and sign in, or paste a key from your dashboard.
3. Type the formula above into any cell.

Use cases

Flight Booking Summary

Travel booking platforms display flight distances and transit durations directly on ticket search results to give travelers accurate itinerary details.

Loyalty Points Calculation

To award frequent flyer status, loyalty management software measures flight mileage between departure and destination hubs for every passenger ticket.

Corporate Emissions Tracking

When logging business trips, corporate expense platforms look up route distances to audit travel policies and calculate flight carbon budgets.

Air Freight Planning

Estimate transit times and route mileage between airfield pairs before scheduling chartered cargo flights or aircraft repositioning legs.

Other ways to use Airport Distance

Set up Airport Distance on VerveSheets, or reach the same source a different way. Your VerveSheets account and credits work on all of them — one key, one balance.

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