Airplane traveling time?
When booking a flight it has depart time and arrival time.
Is the depart time considered the moment you get on a plane and taxi out to the runway or is it the moment the plane is in the air?
I was wondering because I booked a round trip nonstop. The first trip leaving is 2 hours and 30 minutes and the return trip is 2 hours and 10 minutes. I was just curious if had to deal with taking off from a much larger airport and waiting on other planes leaving at the same time.
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The time is calculated from when the doors close and taxiing begins. Taxiing time isn't really significant. Arrival is when the plane arrives at the gate. The return trip may be shorter because of the direction of the earth going back (west-east flights are shorter) or because the weather is expected to be better/more favorable winds. There are a lot of factors, but it usually never has to do with the size of the airport.
Don't bother getting hung up how <<exact>> the scheduled time is.
Departure time and arrival time are established for scheduling purposes and do not necessarily reflect the <<actual>> time in the air. Those time intervals are often significantly longer than the actual flight time because the airline can still meet statistical limits for being "on time" even if there was an actual 20 minute delay somewhere after they pull back from the gate.
In any event, flights that go East to West frequently take longer than those going West to East because the West to East flights typically have a tailwind courtesy of the jet stream. That can make a significant difference in the actual time in the air.
Departure time is the time when the doors are closed and the aircraft gets ready to proceed; arrival time should be when the aircraft has arrived at its parking position. The difference in travel time can be based on different aircraft types used or based on flying with the winds or against the winds..