UAEJNB

4Z · hub Johannesburg (JNB) · independent

Hand carry on Airlink

Airlink flies from Johannesburg (JNB) in South Africa. We book it when it has the next suitable departure, being independent of every alliance is what lets us combine it with any other carrier on one routing.

Ask for a routing All airlines we fly

RouteUAE → JNB

Typical flying time8h 05m

Distance≈6,400 km

Typical outcomeSame-Day

One person beats a parcel networkon Airlink

The freight chain is not slow because aircraft are slow, it is slow because a consignment waits at every handover. A courier removes the queues, not the kilometres.

OnBoard CourierOne person. One seat. One signature.

CollectedIn the cabin Delivered in on Airlink, same day or next morning

Conventional air freightA parcel in a system, every handover is a queue.

Drop-offAcceptance cut-off Build-upFlight Break-downCustoms Delivered, day 3 to 5

0h24h48h72h96h+

When a seat beats a parcel, the full comparison →

Firm quote in 15 minutes

Tell us what has to fly. We answer with a flight and a price.

Five short questions. A dispatcher replies with a named departure, the delivery hour and one fixed price, day and night.

One named courier from collection to signature
Customs cleared in person on arrival
Licensed UAE company, proper VAT invoices

Operational route facts

Last reviewed: August 2026, carrier line-ups and frequencies are indicative and change with seasonal schedules; your quote is priced on the day’s actual flights.

How the flying actually works

Non-stop links into Johannesburg (JNB) from the Gulf departure bank, the quote names the exact flight and day-of-week validity:

DXBEmirates (multiple daily)

AUHEtihad (daily)

DOHQatar Airways (daily or better)

Alternative gateways nearby

, No practical alternate within 250 km, this airport carries the lane alone

When the primary airport’s timing loses, a late bank, a curfew, a fog morning, the quote compares these alternates with the true road leg included, and names the winner.

220countries and territories on the desk

500+airports a courier can be booked into

15 minfrom your message to a firm price

24/7the operations centre is awake

Three departure boards, one desk: Emirates, flydubai and Etihad for on Airlink

A hand-carry is only as fast as the next departure. The desk watches three boards at once and books the one that lands first, then holds the one that leaves next.

Emirates

The night bank out of Terminal 3

Between one and four in the morning Emirates pushes back a wave of widebodies from Terminal 3 that reach Europe before the first meeting and Asia by the afternoon. For on Airlink that wave is the reason a courier confirmed at eight in the evening is still delivering the next day.

Widebody only, non-stop to 140 plus cities

flydubai

The short sectors, several times a day

From Terminal 2 flydubai runs the one to five hour sectors: the Caucasus, Central Asia, East Africa, the Balkans, the subcontinent. Where a widebody leaves once a day, flydubai often leaves three times, which turns a missed slot into a ninety minute delay rather than a lost day.

Frequency is the fallback

Etihad

Abu Dhabi as the second runway

Ninety minutes down the E11, Etihad leaves from Zayed International with its own bank of departures and, for the United States, immigration cleared before boarding. When the Dubai departure for on Airlink is gone, the desk looks at Abu Dhabi before it looks at tomorrow.

US preclearance at AUH

The desk holds no allegiance to a carrier. The booking goes to whichever board puts a courier at on Airlink first, at a fare the quote can carry.

on Airlink: every hour it waits is an hour it is not moving.

Five questions, one fixed price, a named flight. The desk answers within 15 minutes, day and night, and you decide.

Price it now How it works

OnBoard Courier Airlink in the network the desk measures

Computed on 2026-09-07 from AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics. The desk holds departure schedules for 571 airports, and for the 4Z code that yields 67 city pairs across 48 of them. It is a measured sample of the published timetable and not the whole of it. Frequencies move with the season, and a quote is priced on the flights running the day you ask.

48airports on this carrier

15countries and territories reached

67scheduled city pairs held

294average daily flights across them

The schedule the desk holds carries the 4Z code on 67 city pairs, reaching 48 airports in 15 countries and territories. Some of those sectors are flown by OnBoard Courier Airlink and some are sold under its code and flown by a partner, which is how the published timetable states it and how a booking has to be read. 91.7 per cent of those airports sit on African time zones, and the next largest block is on Indian Ocean time zones.

The longest sector held for the carrier is Jo'anna (JNB) to Nairobi (NBO) at about 2,912 km, and the shortest is Mpacha (MPA) to Maun (MUB) at about 272 km. 73.1 per cent of the pairs are under 1,500 km. This is a short sector operator, which for a hand carry out of the Gulf means it is almost always the second leg of the routing rather than the first. The airport that appears most often on those pairs is Jo'anna (JNB), on 45 of them, which is 67.2 per cent of everything held under this code.

The thickest sector under the code is Cape Town (CPT) to Jo'anna (JNB) at about 50.4 movements a day, which across a full day is roughly one every 0.5 hours. On a sector at that cadence a missed departure costs a wait rather than a night. 19 of the 67 pairs run four or more times a day and 12 run once a day or less. The second figure is the one that matters when a consignment leaves the factory late, because on those sectors the desk will quote a different carrier rather than promise an hour it cannot hold. After Jo'anna (JNB) the code leans on Cape Town (CPT) on 16, Windhoek (WDH) on 4, Maun (MUB) on 4 pairs respectively, and those are the airports a dispatcher looks at second when the first routing is full.

The sectors that carry the 4Z code most often

From	To	Country	Flights a day	km	Open it
Cape Town CPT	Jo'anna JNB	South Africa	50.4	1,271	the pair page
Durban DUR	Jo'anna JNB	South Africa	36	479	plan this
Harare HRE	Jo'anna JNB	South Africa	14.4	958	plan this
Jo'anna JNB	Port Elizabeth PLZ	South Africa	12.4	908	plan this
Gaborone GBE	Jo'anna JNB	South Africa	11	293	plan this
Jo'anna JNB	Lusaka LUN	Zambia	8.6	1,202	plan this
Bloemfontein BFN	Jo'anna JNB	South Africa	8	380	plan this
Jo'anna JNB	Mpumalanga MQP	South Africa	7.1	298	plan this
East London ELS	Jo'anna JNB	South Africa	7	768	plan this
George GRJ	Jo'anna JNB	South Africa	7	1,041	plan this
Jo'anna JNB	Windhoek WDH	Namibia	6.4	1,165	plan this
Jo'anna JNB	Victoria Falls VFA	Zimbabwe	5.9	928	plan this
Jo'anna JNB	Maputo MPM	Mozambique	5.9	433	plan this
Bulawayo BUQ	Jo'anna JNB	South Africa	5.7	682	plan this
Cape Town CPT	Port Elizabeth PLZ	South Africa	4.9	647	plan this
Jo'anna JNB	Kimberley KIM	South Africa	4.9	453	plan this

The 16 sectors the 4Z code appears on most often, out of 67. Flights a day is the average daily scheduled movement on the busier of the two directions, as held on 2026-09-07. The schedule lists a code against a sector whether the carrier operates it or sells it, so read this as where the code can be booked. Distances are great circle, computed from the published coordinates of the two airports.

How a courier reaches Jo'anna from the Gulf

The schedule the desk holds shows no 4Z service into a UAE airport, so a courier does not board this carrier in Dubai. The routing is built the other way round: a Gulf carrier takes the first leg to Jo'anna (JNB), and OnBoard Courier Airlink carries the second.

UAE gateway	Operated by	Flights a day	km	Open it
Dubai DXB	Emirates	4.6	6,413	plan this
Abu Dhabi AUH	Etihad Airways	0.6	6,299	plan this

The first leg, measured. These are the 2 links the desk holds from a UAE gateway into Jo'anna (JNB), the airport this code is booked through most often.

Published lanes the 4Z code can carry half of

None of the 346 lanes the site publishes is flown end to end under this code. These 14 are the ones it touches at one end, which is how a routing gets built when no single carrier covers the whole distance: a Gulf carrier takes the first leg and this one finishes it. The lane index holds the rest.

Abu Dhabi to Johannesburg, joined at Jo'anna (JNB), which this code reaches on 45 of its pairs.
Johannesburg to Doha, joined at Jo'anna (JNB), which this code reaches on 45 of its pairs.
Dubai to Johannesburg, joined at Jo'anna (JNB), which this code reaches on 45 of its pairs.
Frankfurt to Johannesburg, joined at Jo'anna (JNB), which this code reaches on 45 of its pairs.
Johannesburg to London, joined at Jo'anna (JNB), which this code reaches on 45 of its pairs.
Johannesburg to Perth, joined at Jo'anna (JNB), which this code reaches on 45 of its pairs.
Cape Town to London, joined at Cape Town (CPT), which this code reaches on 16 of its pairs.
Dubai to Cape Town, joined at Cape Town (CPT), which this code reaches on 16 of its pairs.

The countries the 4Z code opens

Of the 15 countries and territories reached, 6 are reached at a single airport, which for a courier means one airport of entry and a road leg for everything else in that country. The deepest is South Africa with 17 airports on this code. The country desk for South Africa sets out the customs practice, the working hours and the road legs behind these airports.

South Africa (17 airports), Mozambique (7 airports), Namibia (3 airports), Botswana (3 airports), Zimbabwe (3 airports), Zambia (3 airports), Malawi (2 airports), Madagascar (2 airports), Tanzania (2 airports), Lesotho (1 airports).

Where to go next on the 4Z network

Each of the 48 airports above has its own atlas entry with the full destination list, and each of the 67 sectors can be opened in the calculator with the flying time, the distance and the delivery hour worked out. Start with the atlas entry for Jo'anna (JNB), the route calculator with Dubai to JNB already filled in, the carrier index for the other 236 airlines the desk lists and the airport atlas itself.

Where Airlink fits in an OBC routing

Airlink is based in South Africa and operates from Johannesburg (JNB) independently of the global alliances. For us a carrier is not a brand preference, it is a departure time. We book Airlink when it has the next seat that gets your consignment there, and we combine it freely with any other airline on the same routing because we hold no alliance membership and no exclusive contract.

Cabin baggage reality

As a full-service carrier the cabin baggage allowance is usually workable for a hand-carry, and a premium cabin adds both allowance and rebooking priority. We still confirm the limit for the specific flight and aircraft type before quoting.

Connections

Where a single Airlink sector does not reach the destination, the courier connects, and stays with the consignment on every leg, so it is never handed over in transit.

How we book

An ordinary passenger seat on the open market, in the courier's own name, matching the passport exactly. Premium cabins when the consignment or the schedule justifies it.

Customs is separate

The airline moves the aircraft; the courier declares the goods. Entry rules are per country, not per carrier, see our country guides.

Why frequency matters

A carrier with three rotations a day turns a missed departure into a short wait. That is worth more on a deadline than a marginally faster aircraft.

Independence

No alliance, no exclusivity, no volume commitment. The schedule decides, not a supplier agreement.

Destinations and markets this carrier serves for us

Airline timetables change constantly, so rather than reprint a schedule that will be wrong next month, here is what is useful: the markets where Airlink regularly appears in our routings, and the pages that describe those lanes in detail. If you need a specific city on Airlink, ask and we will check the live schedule.

Country page: South Africa →Johannesburg Cape Town Durban

Markets in Middle East & Africa:

United Arab Emirates Saudi Arabia Qatar Kuwait Oman Bahrain Jordan Lebanon Iraq Israel All countries →

On board courier vs air cargo

Whether the seat is on Airlink or any other carrier, this is what a courier changes compared with the hold of the same aircraft.

✓ On board courier

A person in a seat

Leaves on the next available flight, often within hours of your call, 24/7.
One named courier holds the consignment from collection to signature.
Travels in the aircraft cabin wherever the airline, cargo classification and security rules permit it; the transport configuration is confirmed before booking.
No warehouse, no consolidation window, no overnight sort.
Customs cleared in person, questions answered at the counter, immediately.
Same-day delivery is realistic on most sectors out of the UAE.
Built for high-value, fragile, temperature-critical goods and originals.
Proof of delivery with signature, ID check and a photograph within minutes.
A human being you can call at any point of the journey.

✕ Air cargo & express freight

A parcel in a system

Waits for the next consolidation and space allocation, not for you.
Passes through many hands: hub, build-up, ramp, break-down, delivery agent.
Rides in the hold, frequently sitting in a warehouse overnight.
Each handover is a queue, and each queue is where hours disappear.
Cleared in a batch by a broker; one query can idle the shipment for a day.
Next day at best on most lanes, two to three days if it is held.
Chain of custody is a scan history, not a person with the box.
Signed for by whoever happens to be at the door.
Right answer for heavy, bulky or non-urgent freight, and we will say so.

To be straight about it: air cargo is not a bad service, it is a different one. It moves weight cheaply and it does that extremely well. A hand-carry buys back hours, and it is worth paying for exactly when an hour of delay costs more than a seat on a plane, which is the case far more often than most shippers assume, and far less often than most courier companies claim.

The full comparison, with costs →

Questions about flying Airlink

What clients and couriers ask when they see this carrier on an assignment.

01Are you an agent or partner of Airlink?

No. OnBoard Courier is an independent courier management company. We buy ordinary passenger seats on the open market and hold no agency, contract or partnership with any airline. Airline names and marks belong to their owners and are used here only to describe the routes these assignments travel on.

02Will my consignment definitely fly Airlink?

Only if that is genuinely the fastest option for your deadline. We book whichever carrier departs next with a seat and a cabin allowance that fits.

03How much can a courier carry on Airlink?

As a full-service carrier the cabin baggage allowance is usually workable for a hand-carry, and a premium cabin adds both allowance and rebooking priority. We confirm the exact allowance for the specific flight before quoting.

04Can I fly as a courier on Airlink?

If you are in our network, yes, couriers fly whichever airline the assignment requires. We book and pay the ticket and pay a fee per completed assignment.

Need a routing that uses Airlink?

Send the two ends and the deadline. We will check the live schedule across every carrier and come back with the fastest realistic option.

Request a quote → Browse countries

Why a courier on Airlink rather than a cargo booking

The difference between a courier and a shipment is not speed, although speed is the reason most people call. The difference is that a shipment is a record in a system and a courier is a person with a legal obligation. Systems queue; people answer questions. That distinction decides almost everything about how a consignment behaves at a border.

The economics are less strange than they look. A courier assignment costs roughly what a business-class ticket costs, plus a fee and the ground work at each end. Set against a stopped production line, a grounded aircraft, an expiring clinical sample or a tender that closes at noon, that number stops being the interesting part of the conversation very quickly.

What clients are actually buying is the removal of every handover. In a normal air freight movement a consignment changes hands seven or eight times: shipper, forwarder, handling agent, ramp, aircraft, ramp, break-bulk, broker, delivery agent. Each handover is a queue and each queue is where hours disappear. A courier reduces that number to one, collection, and one more, delivery.

On the Johannesburg lane this matters more than average, because the schedule and the customs position both reward preparation and punish improvisation. The half hour spent on the description of the goods before departure is the half day you do not spend at the border afterwards.

How an assignment routed over Johannesburg runs

The whole point of an on board courier is that nothing waits for a batch. Here is what actually happens between your message and the signature on a Johannesburg assignment, with the timings we work to rather than the ones a brochure would promise.

Minute 0 to 15

You tell us what it is

Everything starts with an honest description of the goods. We ask what it is, what it costs, who is receiving it in Johannesburg and when it must be in their hands. Vague answers produce vague quotes and, far worse, customs problems at the other end.

Minute 15 to 45

We screen it and price it

Screening comes before pricing, always. Shipper, consignee, commodity, end use, route. In parallel we check the cabin allowance for the specific flights that could work to Johannesburg, because an allowance that fits on one aircraft type does not automatically fit on another.

Hour 1 to 3

A named courier is assigned and booked

The matching runs against couriers who are available now, whose passport and visas suit the route to Johannesburg, and whose delivery history fits the value of the consignment. The ticket is then bought in the courier's own name, matching their passport exactly, a booking in anything but the traveller's legal name is refused at the gate.

Hour 2 to 4

Collection, sealing and documentation

Collection is a documented handover, not a pickup. Identity checked, contents verified against the invoice, seal applied and numbered, photographs taken, and the file opened. From that point one named person holds the consignment until someone in Johannesburg signs for it.

In flight

The consignment stays in the cabin

Once airborne, the job is simply not to let go. The consignment stays in the cabin for every sector; where the routing to Johannesburg connects, the courier remains airside with it rather than clearing and re-entering.

On arrival

Customs, then a signature

The courier declares the goods through the red channel at Johannesburg (JNB), answers questions in person and, where the category or the value warrants it, meets a customs broker we have already briefed. The handover is against signature, printed name and an identification reference, timestamped and with photographs where you have asked for them.

The paperwork that decides how fast Johannesburg goes

Nothing delays a hand-carry as reliably as a document that says something different from the box. This is what we prepare with you before the courier leaves, and why each piece matters at Johannesburg (JNB).

ATA Carnet and temporary admission

Where goods enter South Africa temporarily and leave again, demonstration equipment, exhibition pieces, professional gear, a carnet avoids duty entirely and gives the courier a document the officer recognises immediately. It has to be issued before departure; there is no retrospective version.

Proforma invoice for non-sales

Repairs, exhibition goods, replacements and samples still need a document with a realistic value on it. The value is what the goods are worth, not what you would like the duty to be, an understated value is a customs offence in South Africa rather than a negotiating position.

Tariff classification

The HS code decides the duty, the permits and sometimes whether the goods may enter South Africa at all. We would rather agree the classification with you before departure than watch an officer choose one for us, because the officer's choice is the one that stands.

Commercial invoice

The document customs actually reads. It needs a plain description of the goods, the real value, the currency, the terms of sale and the full names and addresses of both parties. “Samples, no commercial value” is not a customs value and it is the fastest way to turn a twenty-minute clearance at Johannesburg (JNB) into an afternoon.

Duty, tax and who pays it

Import duty and VAT or GST in South Africa are the consignee's cost unless you have agreed otherwise in writing, and the terms should be settled before departure. It is a small conversation before the flight and an expensive one after it.

Named consignee with authority

Someone in Johannesburg must be entitled to receive the goods and, where clearance requires it, able to act as importer of record. A delivery address without an authorised person behind it is where otherwise perfect assignments stall.

What a Johannesburg courier actually costs, and why

We do not publish a price list, because a fixed table would be a lie: the same box on the same route costs differently at four hours' notice than at two days'. What we can do is be exact about which levers move the number, so nothing in the quote is a surprise.

Visas and positioning

If the routing to South Africa needs a visthe courier does not hold, either we assign a courier who does or we position one, and a global network exists precisely so that the answer is usually the first option rather than the second.

The ground legs at both ends

Collection in the Emirates and delivery beyond Johannesburg (JNB) are part of the job, not an extra. Where the delivery address is a long drive from the airport, or a second domestic sector is needed, we price it in from the start instead of stopping at arrivals.

Declared value and insurance

All-risk cover is priced on the declared value of the goods, and it is the number that matters, airline liability under the Montreal Convention is a fraction of what most courier consignments are worth. Understating the value to save a little on cover is a false economy the first time anything goes wrong.

How much notice you give us

A seat bought four hours before departure costs what a seat bought four hours before departure costs. Nothing about that is a courier margin, it is simply the airline's pricing curve, and it is the single largest variable in a Johannesburg quote.

What is always included

Ticket, courier fee, airport transfers, the hotel where an overnight is unavoidable, the documentation work and our operations desk being awake for the whole journey. What is not included is duty and tax in South Africa, and anything you ask for after departure that changes the routing.

Distance and sector count

A direct flight to Johannesburg is one ticket and one risk. A two-sector routing is cheaper on paper and more expensive in practice, because every connection is a chance to lose the consignment's schedule. We quote the routing we would actually fly, not the cheapest one that technically arrives.

Every quote we send is fixed before departure and contains the flight, the courier's fee, transfers and, where an overnight cannot be avoided, the hotel. The things that can change it afterwards are the things you control: a change of destination, a change of goods, or a delay at your end that costs the booked flight. Duty and tax in South Africa sit with the consignee unless we have agreed otherwise in writing.

Dubai skyline at dusk — From the pearl divers to the departure gates, this coast has always moved what the world was waiting for.
The story of the Gulf

What can go wrong on a Johannesburg assignment, and what we do about it

Every operator has these problems. The difference is whether the answer was decided in advance or invented at the counter. This is our answer to each of them, written down before you need it.

The goods turn out to be regulated

Found before departure, this is a repack or a permit. Found at security, it is a lost flight and sometimes a confiscation. It is the reason we ask uncomfortable questions about contents at the very beginning instead of taking a booking politely.

The declared value is challenged

It happens, and it is survivable when the invoice is realistic and consistent with the goods. It is not survivable when someone wrote a convenient number. We check this before departure precisely because there is no way to fix it afterwards.

The connection is missed

This is why we build routings above the minimum connection time rather than at it. Where a connection is genuinely tight, the courier holds the consignment airside and takes the next available service rather than clearing into a country they were only passing through.

Something needs to continue past Johannesburg

A second sector, a border crossing or a domestic flight beyond Johannesburg (JNB) is planned as part of the assignment, not handed to a third party on arrival. The chain of custody either holds to the signature or it is not a chain of custody.

Weather or airspace closes the route

Force majeure does not disappear because a shipment is urgent. What we do is re-plan around it, a different hub, a different carrier, occasionally a different UAE airport, and tell you what the new arrival time is rather than letting you discover it.

The flight is cancelled

Not a crisis, a routine. Before the courier leaves for the airport we already know the next two departures that could carry the consignment to Johannesburg, on any carrier, from any of the seven UAE airports. Rebooking is a phone call, not a rescue operation.

How jobs like this actually run

Illustrative cases, patterns from daily OBC work, details generalised for client confidentiality.

YachtingNCE → DXB

A regatta winch motor between two race days.

Chandlery13:20

Evening non-stop18:05

Marina berth03:10 +1

✓ Boat on the start line.

EnergyDOH → IAH

A turbine control card for a plant running on reduced load.

Handover Doha07:10

Non-stop08:55

Site gate Houston17:30

✓ Unit back to full output the same night.

Med-techICN → DXB

A surgical navigation unit needed before a scheduled theatre slot.

Factory dock15:30

Overnight non-stop23:55

Hospital loading bay05:40 +1

✓ In the theatre before the first case.

Times are typical for these lanes; every job gets its own named flight and timeline before you confirm.

How it moves

The next flight out, not the next batch

Your consignment is booked on a named flight, boarding within hours.

Join the OBC network, become an on board courier

Every route on this site runs because somebody was willing to get on the plane with it. We are recruiting vetted couriers worldwide: we book and pay the flight, cover transfers and a hotel where an overnight is needed, and pay a fee for every completed assignment, stated in the offer before you accept it. You decide when you are available.

Flights paid
Fee per assignment
Assignments worldwide
You choose your dates
Training in our Academy

Join the OBC network now → See the open position What does an OBC earn?

Estimate your price, live, before you talk to anyone

An indicative calculation on the OBC-One pattern: airline seat, courier duty, hotel where the routing needs one, transfers and handling. Pick any of the airports we serve, adjust the settings, the breakdown updates as you go. Nothing here is a binding price; the airline fare on the day decides the final number.

Departure hub

Destination airport

What is travelling? Weight: 5 kg More than 23 kg, second courier Service

How urgent?

Indicative total ,

Happy with the estimate? Send it, done.

This sends exactly what you configured above, nothing to retype, no commitment. Indicative figures only; a person confirms the real fare and timing.

Aircraft wing above the clouds — Two of the world’s great airlines call these runways home. We book the seat, you track the flight number.
Departures, every hour, every direction

Get a quote for this route

Tell us what has to move and where it has to be. You get a fixed price and a departure time back, usually within 15 minutes, day or night.

Request a quote

Answered by a person, 24/7. No commitment. One form, one reply.

Origin airport

Destination airport

Shipment type

Ready date & time

Who is booking

Company

What does the company do?

Your name

Phone

Email address

What is in the consignment?

Request received. We reply by email from bookings [at] onboardcourier [dot] ae, usually within 15 minutes.

Confidential · no commitment · 24/7 availability

I need to send something

Book hand-carry delivery from the UAE to anywhere in the world, and follow it in real time. Same-day departure available.

Book a shipment → Client login

I want to fly as a courier

We pay the ticket and a fee per completed assignment. You choose when you are available.

Apply as an OBC → See the open position

Where to go from here

Hand carry on Airlink is one chapter of a larger network. OnBoard Courier moves time-critical consignments with vetted on-board couriers departing 24/7 from all seven UAE airports to 584 destinations across 219 countries. Choose the service that fits, classic hand-carry, AOG for grounded aircraft, medical and pharma, next flight out or high-value goods, then check entry requirements and customs by country and how an assignment actually runs, minute by minute.

Prefer to compare first? Read when a seat beats a parcel network, browse the industries we move for or scan the airlines the couriers the desk places fly with. If you travel often yourself, flying as an OnBoard Courier pays per completed assignment. For anything urgent, the fastest route is the quote form above, answered by a person, day or night.

One person beats a parcel networkon Airlink

Tell us what has to fly. We answer with a flight and a price.

Operational route facts

How the flying actually works

Alternative gateways nearby

Three departure boards, one desk: Emirates, flydubai and Etihad for on Airlink

The night bank out of Terminal 3

The short sectors, several times a day

Abu Dhabi as the second runway

on Airlink: every hour it waits is an hour it is not moving.

OnBoard Courier Airlink in the network the desk measures

The sectors that carry the 4Z code most often

How a courier reaches Jo'anna from the Gulf

Published lanes the 4Z code can carry half of

The countries the 4Z code opens

Where to go next on the 4Z network

Where Airlink fits in an OBC routing

Cabin baggage reality

Connections

How we book

Customs is separate

Why frequency matters

Independence

Destinations and markets this carrier serves for us

On board courier vs air cargo

✓ On board courier

✕ Air cargo & express freight

Questions about flying Airlink

01Are you an agent or partner of Airlink?

02Will my consignment definitely fly Airlink?

03How much can a courier carry on Airlink?

04Can I fly as a courier on Airlink?

Need a routing that uses Airlink?

Why a courier on Airlink rather than a cargo booking

How an assignment routed over Johannesburg runs

You tell us what it is

We screen it and price it

A named courier is assigned and booked

Collection, sealing and documentation

The consignment stays in the cabin

Customs, then a signature

The paperwork that decides how fast Johannesburg goes

ATA Carnet and temporary admission

Proforma invoice for non-sales

Tariff classification

Commercial invoice

Duty, tax and who pays it

Named consignee with authority

What a Johannesburg courier actually costs, and why

Visas and positioning

The ground legs at both ends

Declared value and insurance

How much notice you give us

What is always included

Distance and sector count

What can go wrong on a Johannesburg assignment, and what we do about it

The goods turn out to be regulated

The declared value is challenged

The connection is missed

Something needs to continue past Johannesburg

Weather or airspace closes the route

The flight is cancelled

More questions about carrying a consignment on Airlink

01Can a courier carry more than one consignment?

02What do you need from me to start?

03Are you an airline?

04Can I speak to a person during the journey?

05Do you handle customs at Johannesburg (JNB)?

06What cannot travel with a courier?

07Can you collect outside the UAE?

08Is the consignment insured?

How jobs like this actually run

The next flight out, not the next batch

Join the OBC network, become an on board courier

Estimate your price, live, before you talk to anyone

Get a quote for this route

Request a quote

I need to send something

I want to fly as a courier

Where to go from here