It does not publish door to door transit times for air freight, because this site does not hold measured ones. Anybody publishing a single figure for door to door air freight on a lane is publishing either a marketing number or an average across cases that are not alike. Ask your forwarder for a time and ask what happens to it if the first flight is missed.
Air freight · transit times
Transit times, and what a transit time leaves out
The flight, modelled from real scheduled network data, for every corridor this site holds. And a plain statement of why there is no door to door figure next to it.
- Corridors
- 12
- Network checked
- 2026-09-07
- Block time
- Modelled
- Door to door times
- Not held
What this desk is. OnBoard Courier places on board couriers: a vetted person carries the consignment in the cabin on a scheduled passenger flight and hands it over against a signature. The desk does not operate air freight, does not hold an airline contract and is not a forwarder. Air freight enquiries sent through this site are passed to a vetted forwarding partner, and the pages here are written so that you can tell which of the two you actually need.
What is on this page and what is not
This page publishes the flight, for the corridors this site holds real scheduled network data for. Distance, modelled block time, average scheduled services per day and the number of operating carriers, all from the same dated dataset the Atlas is built from.
The site does publish real timed hand carry examples, hour by hour, on how a booking runs, because those the desk did measure.
The hours around the flight
The flight is the part that is predictable. Around it, in an air freight movement, sit collection to the forwarder, the airline cut off before departure, acceptance and security screening, build up onto a unit load device, then at the far end break down, transfer to a shed, the customs entry, and the delivery leg. Each of those is a queue with other people's shipments in it.
None of them is optional and none of them is unusually slow. They are the reason a ten hour flight is routinely part of a multi day door to door movement, and the reason a hand carry, which enters none of those queues, arrives sooner without flying faster.
The step that most often decides the outcome is the cut off. Missing it does not delay the shipment by the length of the delay, it delays it to the next departure with capacity, which on a thin lane is a different day.
The corridors this site holds data for
| Corridor | Airports | km, great circle | Modelled block time | Scheduled flights a day | Operating carriers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dubai to Frankfurt | DXB FRA | 4,845 | 6h 20m | 3.43 | 1 |
| Dubai to Mumbai | DXB BOM | 1,927 | 2h 58m | 14.71 | 5 |
| Dubai to Delhi | DXB DEL | 2,184 | 3h 17m | 14.57 | 5 |
| Dubai to Singapore | DXB SIN | 5,847 | 7h 33m | 4.57 | 1 |
| Dubai to Johannesburg | DXB JNB | 6,412 | 8h 13m | 4.57 | 1 |
| Dubai to Amsterdam | DXB AMS | 5,169 | 6h 44m | 3.43 | 1 |
| Dubai to Paris | DXB CDG | 5,238 | 6h 49m | 3.57 | 2 |
| Abu Dhabi to London | AUH LHR | 5,517 | 7h 09m | 4.29 | 1 |
| Frankfurt to Chicago | FRA ORD | 6,970 | 8h 54m | 4.71 | 3 |
| Frankfurt to Shanghai | FRA PVG | 8,860 | 11h 10m | 5.14 | 5 |
| Frankfurt to Seoul | FRA ICN | 8,545 | 10h 48m | 4.43 | 5 |
| Amsterdam to Detroit | AMS DTW | 6,323 | 8h 07m | 3.43 | 1 |
Network data checked 2026-09-07. Distances are great circle and read short against a flown routing. Block times are modelled, not measured.
Questions people actually ask
01Why is there no door to door time on this page?
Because this site does not measure air freight door to door times and will not publish an average it did not take. Door to door on an air freight movement is decided by the forwarder, the cut off, the shed, the broker and the day, and the honest range on the same lane is wide enough that a single figure would mislead. What is published here is the flight, modelled from real network data, which is the floor.
02How is the block time computed?
Great circle distance between the two airports, multiplied by a track factor of 1.06 to approximate a flown track, divided by a cruise speed of 720, 830 or 880 km per hour depending on the distance band, plus thirty minutes for taxi at the two ends. It is the same model the route calculator on this site uses. It is a model, not a timetable.
03What do the flights per day mean?
The average number of scheduled daily services on that pair in the network data this site holds, checked on 2026-09-07. It is a snapshot, it includes some all cargo operators but is not a complete freighter schedule, and a carrier not listed may still fly the pair.
04Why does frequency matter more than flight time?
Because flight time is what happens when everything works and frequency is what happens when it does not. On a pair with ten daily services, a missed flight costs hours. On a pair with three services a week it costs days. For a shipment with a deadline, the second number is the one that decides the outcome.
Where this came from
- Scheduled network, airlines and frequencies: AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics as held by this site, retrieved 2026-09-07. It is a snapshot rather than a live timetable, it includes some all cargo operators but is not a complete freighter schedule, and a carrier that is not listed may still fly the pair.
- Distances: Great circle, computed from published airport coordinates. They are shorter than a flown track and are not routing distances.
- Block times: Modelled, not measured: great circle distance times a track factor of 1.06, divided by a cruise speed of 720, 830 or 880 km/h by distance band, plus thirty minutes of taxi across the two ends. This is the same model the route calculator on this site uses. A real timetable will differ.
- Industrial sites: Public company information, checked 2026-09-07. Nothing here states or implies that any company named is a customer of OnBoard Courier or of any operator.
- Air cargo rules and definitions: The ICAO Technical Instructions and the IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations for dangerous goods, IATA Resolution 600a for the air waybill, the Montreal Convention 1999 for carrier liability, and Incoterms 2020. Where this site holds no figure of its own it says so rather than inventing one.
Who publishes this. OnBoard Courier is a hand carry placement desk in Dubai. It does not fly air freight. These pages exist because the desk is asked to rescue air freight that has run out of time often enough to have learned where the line between the two sits, and because a comparison written by somebody who sells only one of the two options is not a comparison. Found an error? Tell us and we will correct it.
Air freight, the comparison · Corridors · The Atlas · Route calculator