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Is there some way to use only Airtable instruments to calculate the great circle distance between two points?

I have those points with lat and long coordinates and need a formula to calculate the great circle distance (or something close to it, no need in high precision).

I know the haversine formula, but lack of trigonometry functions in Airtable makes the whole thing impossible. I am not into scripts, zapiers and web-hooks unfortunately.

I have a Google API key which is used to create maps from Airtable data, but I do not need to calculate road distance or time, only great circle (use case is aviation).

Just a formula of any complexity would be great.

Thanks to everyone concerned.


Not possible (as you make clear).



You need to get into scripts - trust me; your life – especially with Airtable – will change.



You need only a couple of javascript functions in a script block to perform this geometric computation.


This is the Haversine function.


function getDistanceFromLatLonInKm(lat1,lon1,lat2,lon2) {

  var R = 6371; // Radius of the earth in km

  var dLat = deg2rad(lat2-lat1);  // deg2rad below

  var dLon = deg2rad(lon2-lon1); 

  var a = 

    Math.sin(dLat/2) * Math.sin(dLat/2) +

    Math.cos(deg2rad(lat1)) * Math.cos(deg2rad(lat2)) * 

    Math.sin(dLon/2) * Math.sin(dLon/2)

    ; 

  var c = 2 * Math.atan2(Math.sqrt(a), Math.sqrt(1-a)); 

  var d = R * c; // Distance in km

  return d;

}



function deg2rad(deg) {

  return deg * (Math.PI/180)

}

Not possible (as you make clear).



You need to get into scripts - trust me; your life – especially with Airtable – will change.



You need only a couple of javascript functions in a script block to perform this geometric computation.


This is the Haversine function.


function getDistanceFromLatLonInKm(lat1,lon1,lat2,lon2) {

  var R = 6371; // Radius of the earth in km

  var dLat = deg2rad(lat2-lat1);  // deg2rad below

  var dLon = deg2rad(lon2-lon1); 

  var a = 

    Math.sin(dLat/2) * Math.sin(dLat/2) +

    Math.cos(deg2rad(lat1)) * Math.cos(deg2rad(lat2)) * 

    Math.sin(dLon/2) * Math.sin(dLon/2)

    ; 

  var c = 2 * Math.atan2(Math.sqrt(a), Math.sqrt(1-a)); 

  var d = R * c; // Distance in km

  return d;

}



function deg2rad(deg) {

  return deg * (Math.PI/180)

}

Thank you very much @Bill.French

I will try to figure out how to incorporate it in my base with zero scripting experience so far;-)

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