The New Zealand Warriors finally move away from spending the most time in an aeroplane during 2026, with the North Queensland Cowboys taking over the mantle.
The top of the list is once again dominated by teams having to travel to Las Vegas, of which the Cowboys are one.
Their almost 40-hour round trip to move from Townsville to Las Vegas, including connections, puts them at an enormous disadvantage, with North Queensland then heading on the road another 11 times throughout the year, with five of those to Sydney, one to Canberra, and one to Christchurch.
The trips tip them over the hundred-hour barrier.
The Warriors have 15 trips away from Auckland this year, hosting Magic Round in Brisbane, and playing home games in Christchurch and Wellington, but they tick in at just under 100 hours for the year.
From there, it is a significant gap to the other Las Vegas-bound teams, the Newcastle Knights, Canterbury Bulldogs and St George Illawarra Dragons, while the Melbourne Storm also have the rough end of the stick at just over the 50-hour mark.
From there, the rest of the competition is relatively well balanced, with the Wests Tigers and Parramatta Eels having the easiest travel schedules for 2026, spending almost no time out of Sydney after Round 11.
Here is the rundown for 2026…
* – Includes the game in Las Vegas.
Note: Flight time relates to the scheduled time of a flight by the quickest route possible, including connections where necessary.
Flights were mainly used for interstate travel. They were not used between Sydney and Canberra, Sydney and Newcastle, or in some other regional games.
However, flights were used for other games in and out of Newcastle and Canberra. For games marked with venues still to be announced, it was assumed that they would be played in the home team’s region.
It was also assumed that teams would fly home after each away game, whereas sometimes they may hold a training camp if playing multiple away games in the same area back-to-back.