NH · hub Tokyo (HND) · Star Alliance

Hand carry on All Nippon Airways

All Nippon Airways is a Star Alliance member based in Japan, flying from Tokyo (HND). For a hand-carry that alliance membership matters in one practical way: a courier can connect onto another member carrier on a single ticket, which reduces the risk when a routing needs two flights.

Ask for a routing All airlines we fly

One person beats a parcel networkon All Nippon Airways

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 All Nippon Airways, 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

Where All Nippon Airways fits in an OBC routing

All Nippon Airways is based in Japan and operates from Tokyo (HND) as a member of Star Alliance. For us a carrier is not a brand preference, it is a departure time. We book All Nippon Airways 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 All Nippon Airways 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.

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 All Nippon Airways

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 All Nippon Airways 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 All Nippon Airways 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 All Nippon Airways first, at a fare the quote can carry.

on All Nippon Airways: 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

All Nippon Airways 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 NH code that yields 174 city pairs across 98 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.

98airports on this carrier

25countries and territories reached

174scheduled city pairs held

1,414average daily flights across them

The schedule the desk holds carries the NH code on 174 city pairs, reaching 98 airports in 25 countries and territories. Some of those sectors are flown by All Nippon Airways 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. 75.5 per cent of those airports sit on Asian time zones, and the next largest block is on European time zones.

The longest sector held for the carrier is Mexico City (MEX) to Tokyo (NRT) at about 11,254 km, and the shortest is Tokyo (HND) to Tokyo (NRT) at about 60 km. 35 of the 174 pairs run past 5,000 km, so the carrier carries a courier across a continent on some sectors and shuttles on the rest. The airport that appears most often on those pairs is Tokyo (HND), on 78 of them, which is 44.8 per cent of everything held under this code.

The thickest sector under the code is Chitose / Tomakomai (CTS) to Tokyo (HND) at about 80.4 movements a day, which across a full day is roughly one every 0.3 hours. On a sector at that cadence a missed departure costs a wait rather than a night. 99 of the 174 pairs run four or more times a day and 10 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 Tokyo (HND) the code leans on Tokyo (NRT) on 30, Chitose / Tomakomai (CTS) on 22, Osaka (ITM) on 18 pairs respectively, and those are the airports a dispatcher looks at second when the first routing is full.

The sectors that carry the NH code most often

From	To	Country	Flights a day	km	Open it
Chitose / Tomakomai CTS	Tokyo HND	Japan	80.4	820	the pair page
Fukuoka FUK	Tokyo HND	Japan	64	881	the pair page
Seoul ICN	Tokyo NRT	Japan	49.3	1,257	plan this
Tokyo HND	Naha OKA	Japan	44.6	1,554	the pair page
Tokyo HND	Osaka ITM	Japan	33.9	404	the pair page
Izmir ADB	Istanbul IST	Türkiye	26.6	359	plan this
Tokyo NRT	Taipei TPE	Taiwan	25.6	2,181	the pair page
Fukuoka FUK	Naha OKA	Japan	25.4	865	the pair page
Tokyo HND	Kagoshima KOJ	Japan	25.1	936	plan this
Hong Kong HKG	Tokyo NRT	Japan	24.3	2,962	plan this
Chitose / Tomakomai CTS	Tokyo NRT	Japan	22.1	788	the pair page
Tokyo HND	Kumamoto KMJ	Japan	20.6	874	plan this
Chitose / Tomakomai CTS	Tokoname NGO	Japan	20	976	the pair page
Tokyo HND	Miyazaki KMI	Japan	19.3	872	plan this
Honolulu HNL	Los Angeles LAX	the United States	18.1	4,108	plan this
Chitose / Tomakomai CTS	Sendai SDJ	Japan	17.1	520	plan this

The 16 sectors the NH code appears on most often, out of 174. 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 Tokyo from the Gulf

The schedule the desk holds shows no NH 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 Tokyo (HND), and All Nippon Airways carries the second. The desk holds no non-stop link between a UAE gateway and HND either, which means two changes and a routing the dispatcher checks by hand before it quotes.

Night restrictions on the airports the NH code uses

A hand carry is bought for the hours it saves, and an airport that will not take a movement after a certain hour can spend those hours back. 15 of the 98 airports this code is booked through carry a restriction the desk holds in writing, checked 2026-09-07. Exemptions and seasonal variations exist, and the desk confirms the position with the airport or the carrier before it books.

Tokyo (HND), night operations. Operates around the clock; the preferred Tokyo gate for a late departure.
Tokyo (NRT), night restrictions. Scheduled movements are limited between 23:00 and 06:00 local; late departures usually route through Haneda instead.
Shanghai (PVG), night operations. Operates around the clock.
London (LHR), night restrictions. A night quota system limits movements between 23:30 and 06:00 local. Very few scheduled departures in that window.
Hong Kong (HKG), night operations. Operates around the clock. Night departures to Europe and the Gulf are routine.
Taipei (TPE), night operations. Operates around the clock.

Published lanes that carry the NH code

The site publishes a page for 346 courier lanes. All Nippon Airways appears in the schedule on 5 of them, and the one it flies most is Seoul to Tokyo at about 49.3 movements a day. That overlap is the honest test of whether a carrier is useful to this desk rather than merely famous.

Seoul to Tokyo, about 49.3 scheduled flights a day on the busier direction, 1,257 km.
Hong Kong to Tokyo, about 24.3 scheduled flights a day on the busier direction, 2,962 km.
Bangkok to Tokyo, about 8.1 scheduled flights a day on the busier direction, 4,649 km.
Tokyo to San Francisco, about 4.7 scheduled flights a day on the busier direction, 8,228 km.
Vancouver to Tokyo, about 3.3 scheduled flights a day on the busier direction, 7,503 km.

The countries the NH code opens

Of the 25 countries and territories reached, 15 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 Japan with 51 airports on this code. The country desk for Japan sets out the customs practice, the working hours and the road legs behind these airports.

Japan (51 airports), China (9 airports), United States (8 airports), Türkiye (3 airports), Vietnam (2 airports), South Korea (2 airports), India (2 airports), Germany (2 airports), Taiwan (2 airports), Australia (2 airports).

Where to go next on the NH network

Each of the 98 airports above has its own atlas entry with the full destination list, and each of the 174 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 Tokyo (HND), the route calculator with Dubai to HND already filled in, the carrier index for the other 236 airlines the desk lists and the airport atlas itself.

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 All Nippon Airways regularly appears in our routings, and the pages that describe those lanes in detail. If you need a specific city on All Nippon Airways, ask and we will check the live schedule.

Country page: Japan →Tokyo Osaka Nagoya Fukuoka Nagoya (NGO)Fukuoka (FUK)

Markets in Asia-Pacific:

China Hong Kong SAR Japan South Korea Taiwan Singapore Malaysia Thailand Vietnam Indonesia All countries →

On board courier vs air cargo

Whether the seat is on All Nippon Airways 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 All Nippon Airways

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

01Are you an agent or partner of All Nippon Airways?

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 All Nippon Airways?

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 All Nippon Airways?

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 All Nippon Airways?

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 All Nippon Airways?

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 All Nippon Airways 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.

It is also worth saying what the service does not fix. It does not make a permit appear, it does not make a sanctioned party acceptable, and it does not make an undeclared battery legal. Where those are the problem, a courier only makes the problem arrive faster, which is why the screening happens before the quote.

What that adds up to for Tokyo is a service you should use when the deadline is real and ignore when it is not. We would rather tell you to send it as express freight and keep the relationship than sell you a courier for a box that could have travelled overnight anyway.

How an assignment routed over Tokyo 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 Tokyo 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

The first conversation is short and specific: contents, declared value, collection address, delivery address in Tokyo, and the real deadline rather than the comfortable one. If there are batteries, powders, liquids, biological material or anything regulated in the box, that is the moment to say so, not at the check-in desk.

Minute 15 to 45

We screen it and price it

Before a price exists we screen the parties, the commodity and the route against sanctions and export-control lists, and we check whether Tokyo requires a permit or a licensed consignee for that category. This is also where we occasionally say no, and a provider who never says no has simply moved the risk onto you.

Hour 1 to 3

A named courier is assigned and booked

We name the courier and the flight before you pay, not after. That means a real person with a passport valid well beyond the trip, the visas the Tokyo routing needs, and a record of assignments they have already closed cleanly.

Hour 2 to 4

Collection, sealing and documentation

The courier collects in person, checks the goods against the description, seals the packaging with a numbered tamper-evident seal and photographs it. The commercial invoice, packing list and any permit travel with the courier, and a copy reaches our operations desk and the consignee in Tokyo at the same moment.

In flight

The consignment stays in the cabin

The flight is the boring part, and that is the point. No hold, no handling agent, no transfer between systems, one person, one box, one continuous chain of custody all the way to Tokyo (HND).

On arrival

Customs, then a signature

The courier declares the goods through the red channel at Tokyo (HND), 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 Tokyo 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 Tokyo (HND).

Tariff classification

The HS code decides the duty, the permits and sometimes whether the goods may enter Japan 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.

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 Japan rather than a negotiating position.

ATA Carnet and temporary admission

Where goods enter Japan 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.

Certificates and permits

Certificates of origin, health and phytosanitary certificates, dangerous goods declarations, export licences for dual-use items, import permits for regulated categories. We identify which of these Japan wants for your specific commodity at the quoting stage, because discovering it at Tokyo (HND) is far too late.

Legalisation and attestation

Documents that must be legalised, apostilled or attested to be valid in Japan are checked before the courier collects them. A perfectly delivered document that lacks the right stamp has not solved anybody's problem.

Seal and photographic record

A numbered tamper-evident seal applied at collection and checked at delivery, with photographs at both ends. It costs nothing and it settles every argument about whether a package was opened between the two points.

What a Tokyo 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.

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.

Weekends, nights and public holidays

We operate around the clock, and a consignment collected at 02:00 on a Friday is a normal assignment rather than a special case. It is priced the same way as any other; what changes is which flights exist, not what we charge for our part.

Distance and sector count

A direct flight to Tokyo 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.

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 Tokyo quote.

Size, weight and whether it fits a locker

Anything beyond normal cabin baggage means a second seat, and occasionally two. An extra seat sounds dramatic until you compare it with a charter: it is an order of magnitude cheaper and it moves at the speed of a scheduled flight.

Regulatory profile of the goods

Batteries, biological material, temperature-controlled consignments and anything export-controlled require preparation, sometimes a permit and occasionally a specialist packer. That work is real and it appears in the quote rather than as a surprise at the airport.

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 Japan 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 Tokyo 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.

Customs asks a question

A person can answer it. That single fact is most of the difference between a hand-carry and a cargo booking: a query at Tokyo (HND) that would idle a shipment for a day gets resolved at the counter in minutes because the person who knows what is in the box is standing there.

Something needs to continue past Tokyo

A second sector, a border crossing or a domestic flight beyond Tokyo (HND) 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.

The courier is refused boarding

Almost always a document problem: a passport too close to expiry, a missing transit visa, a name on the ticket that does not match the passport. Every one of those is checked at assignment, and it is checked again before the courier leaves for the airport.

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 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 Tokyo, on any carrier, from any of the seven UAE airports. Rebooking is a phone call, not a rescue operation.

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.

How jobs like this actually run

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

PharmaAUH → LHR

Validation samples at 2 to 8 °C for a London reference lab, data-logger sealed.

Cool-chain packed16:30

In the cabin21:05

Lab signature08:20 +1

✓ Chain of custody and temperature log unbroken.

MediaLHR → DXB

A graded master drive for a premiere, no copies allowed to travel unaccompanied.

Post-house12:15

In the cabin16:20

Screening room01:30 +1

✓ Premiere ran from the original.

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.

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

How it moves

Collected by hand, not by network

A named courier picks up at your door, the clock starts the moment you confirm.

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
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Assignments worldwide
You choose your dates
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Join the OBC network now → See the open position What does an OBC earn?

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.

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Origin airport

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Shipment type

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Your name

Phone

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What is in the consignment?

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

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I need to send something

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Book a shipment → Client login

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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 All Nippon Airways 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.