How far away is the horizon in a high altitude spyplane?

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PRR

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The claimed record altitude of SR-71 is 16.11 miles, so "16 miles" is allowed for non-hotshot flying.

The SR-71 has beaten 2 hours New York to London. Concord has cracked 3 hours, 747 tends to a bit over 6 hours. (However the liners take off and land. The SR-71 burns or leaks so much fuel getting off the ground that it has to take on more fuel in the air.)
 

PRR

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....Google Maps says there are 484 miles of Interstate road (which is certainly NOT a perfect straight line) from Tucson to Los Angeles....

G-Maps has a Measure Distance function which plots a straight line.
 

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There are plenty of Earth curvature calculators online, if you don't want to do the trig by hand.

And FWIW, taking off from the Gulf coast of Florida on can easily see across the state far out into the Atlantic before ever reaching cruising altitude. It looks quite close. But then Florida isn't very wide.
 
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