🚁 Drone Flight Time Calculator
Estimate your drone’s expected flight time from its battery specs and average power draw, with a safety landing reserve.
What this calculator does
Drone flight time depends on how much energy the battery stores versus how fast the motors and electronics drain it. This calculator turns battery capacity and average current draw into an estimated flight time, with a safety reserve held back for a controlled landing.
The formula
Battery capacity in milliamp-hours is converted to amp-hours by dividing by 1000. Dividing amp-hours by the average current draw (in amps) gives the theoretical run time in hours, which is converted to minutes. Because fully draining a lithium battery in flight is unsafe and manufacturers recommend against it, a safety reserve percentage (commonly 20 to 30 percent) is subtracted to give a more realistic usable flight time.
Actual flight time varies with wind, payload, temperature, and flying style (hovering versus aggressive maneuvers draw very different currents), so treat this as a planning estimate rather than an exact figure.