DM · hub Santo Domingo (SDQ) · independent

Hand carry on Arajet

Arajet flies from Santo Domingo (SDQ) in Dominican Republic. 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.

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One person beats a parcel networkon Arajet

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 Arajet, 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 Arajet fits in an OBC routing

Arajet is based in Dominican Republic and operates from Santo Domingo (SDQ) independently of the global alliances. For us a carrier is not a brand preference, it is a departure time. We book Arajet 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

This is a low-cost carrier, so cabin baggage limits are tighter and enforced more strictly than on a full-service airline. We confirm the allowance for the exact flight before quoting, and where a consignment does not fit we book an additional seat or a different carrier rather than gambling at the gate.

Connections

Where a single Arajet 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 Arajet

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 Arajet 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 Arajet 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 Arajet first, at a fare the quote can carry.

on Arajet: 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 Arajet 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 DM code that yields 33 city pairs across 26 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.

26airports on this carrier

14countries and territories reached

33scheduled city pairs held

93average daily flights across them

The schedule the desk holds carries the DM code on 33 city pairs, reaching 26 airports in 14 countries and territories. Some of those sectors are flown by OnBoard Courier Arajet 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. 100 per cent of those airports sit on time zones in the Americas, and the carrier appears on no other block in this sample.

The longest sector held for the carrier is Buenos Aires (EZE) to Punta Cana (PUJ) at about 6,027 km, and the shortest is Oranjestad (AUA) to Willemstad (CUR) at about 120 km. 4 of the 33 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 Punta Cana (PUJ), on 17 of them, which is 51.5 per cent of everything held under this code.

The thickest sector under the code is Oranjestad (AUA) to Willemstad (CUR) at about 13.1 movements a day, which across a full day is roughly one every 1.8 hours. On a sector at that cadence a missed departure costs a wait rather than a night. That sector does not touch Punta Cana (PUJ), the airport this code is booked through most often, so the desk treats it as a seat sold under the code rather than flown by the carrier, and confirms the operating airline before it quotes. 9 of the 33 pairs run four or more times a day and 11 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 Punta Cana (PUJ) the code leans on Santo Domingo City (SDQ) on 14, Mexico City (NLU) on 3, Oranjestad (AUA) on 2 pairs respectively, and those are the airports a dispatcher looks at second when the first routing is full.

The sectors that carry the DM code most often

From	To	Country	Flights a day	km	Open it
Oranjestad AUA	Willemstad CUR	Curaçao	13.1	120	plan this
Punta Cana PUJ	San Juan SJU	Puerto Rico	6.1	249	plan this
Miami MIA	Santo Domingo City SDQ	the Dominican Republic	6	1,366	plan this
Lima LIM	Punta Cana PUJ	the Dominican Republic	5.6	3,534	plan this
Newark EWR	Santo Domingo City SDQ	the Dominican Republic	5.1	2,513	plan this
Bogotá BOG	Punta Cana PUJ	the Dominican Republic	4.9	1,665	the pair page
Punta Cana PUJ	Toronto YYZ	Canada	4.9	2,984	plan this
Miami MIA	Punta Cana PUJ	the Dominican Republic	4.6	1,466	plan this
Santo Domingo City SDQ	San Juan SJU	Puerto Rico	4.6	387	plan this
Buenos Aires EZE	Punta Cana PUJ	the Dominican Republic	3.9	6,027	the pair page
Punta Cana PUJ	Montreal YUL	Canada	3.6	3,033	plan this
Bogotá BOG	Santo Domingo City SDQ	the Dominican Republic	3.4	1,602	the pair page

The 12 sectors the DM code appears on most often, out of 33. 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 Punta Cana from the Gulf

The schedule the desk holds shows no DM 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 Punta Cana (PUJ), and OnBoard Courier Arajet carries the second. The desk holds no non-stop link between a UAE gateway and PUJ either, which means two changes and a routing the dispatcher checks by hand before it quotes.

Published lanes the DM code can carry half of

None of the 346 lanes the site publishes is flown end to end under this code. These 31 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.

Amsterdam to Mexico City, joined at Mexico City (NLU), which this code reaches on 3 of its pairs.
Dubai to Mexico City, joined at Mexico City (NLU), which this code reaches on 3 of its pairs.
Mexico City to Frankfurt, joined at Mexico City (NLU), which this code reaches on 3 of its pairs.
Madrid to Mexico City, joined at Mexico City (NLU), which this code reaches on 3 of its pairs.
Munich to Mexico City, joined at Mexico City (NLU), which this code reaches on 3 of its pairs.
Paris to Mexico City, joined at Mexico City (NLU), which this code reaches on 3 of its pairs.
Stuttgart to Mexico City, joined at Mexico City (NLU), which this code reaches on 3 of its pairs.
Dubai to Bogota, joined at Bogotá (BOG), which this code reaches on 2 of its pairs.

The countries the DM code opens

Of the 14 countries and territories reached, 8 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 the United States with 5 airports on this code. The country desk for Dominican Republic sets out the customs practice, the working hours and the road legs behind these airports.

United States (5 airports), Colombia (3 airports), Argentina (3 airports), Mexico (3 airports), Canada (2 airports), Dominican Republic (2 airports), Brazil (1 airports), Guatemala (1 airports), Sint Maarten (1 airports), Aruba (1 airports).

Where to go next on the DM network

Each of the 26 airports above has its own atlas entry with the full destination list, and each of the 33 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 Punta Cana (PUJ), the route calculator with Dubai to PUJ 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 Arajet regularly appears in our routings, and the pages that describe those lanes in detail. If you need a specific city on Arajet, ask and we will check the live schedule.

Markets in Americas:

United States Canada Mexico Brazil Argentina Chile Colombia Peru Panama All countries →

On board courier vs air cargo

Whether the seat is on Arajet 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 Arajet

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

01Are you an agent or partner of Arajet?

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 Arajet?

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 Arajet?

This is a low-cost carrier, so cabin baggage limits are tighter and enforced more strictly than on a full-service airline. We confirm the exact allowance for the specific flight before quoting.

04Can I fly as a courier on Arajet?

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 Arajet?

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 Arajet rather than a cargo booking

People usually find this service when something has already gone wrong: a line has stopped, a sample is about to expire, a document has to be somewhere tomorrow that it cannot reach. It is worth understanding how the service works before that day rather than during it.

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.

For Santo Domingo specifically, that means the useful conversation is not “how much” but “what exactly is in the box, and when does it have to be in whose hands”. Answer those two and everything else, the routing, the carrier, the airport, the paperwork, the price, follows in under an hour.

How an assignment routed over Santo Domingo runs

Most people booking a courier for the first time want to know what the hours look like. This is the real sequence for a Santo Domingo assignment, the parts we control, the parts the airline controls, and the part where customs decides how the day goes.

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 Santo Domingo 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

Before a price exists we screen the parties, the commodity and the route against sanctions and export-control lists, and we check whether Santo Domingo 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

Assignment is not a raffle. The consignment's value, its regulatory profile and the destination decide who is offered it. For Santo Domingo, visa eligibility usually narrows the list faster than availability does, which is exactly why a global courier network is worth having.

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 Santo Domingo 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 Santo Domingo (SDQ).

On arrival

Customs, then a signature

The courier declares the goods through the red channel at Santo Domingo (SDQ), 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 Santo Domingo 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 Santo Domingo (SDQ).

Temperature and dangerous goods

Dry ice quantities, lithium battery watt-hours, biological substance classification and packing group all have hard limits for a passenger cabin. Some consignments to Dominican Republic can travel exactly as they are; some need repacking; some cannot fly with a passenger at all, and we say so rather than finding out at security.

Legalisation and attestation

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

ATA Carnet and temporary admission

Where goods enter Dominican Republic 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.

Tariff classification

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

Duty, tax and who pays it

Import duty and VAT or GST in Dominican Republic 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.

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 Santo Domingo (SDQ) into an afternoon.

What a Santo Domingo 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.

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 Santo Domingo 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 Dominican Republic, and anything you ask for after departure that changes the routing.

Visas and positioning

If the routing to Dominican Republic 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 Santo Domingo (SDQ) 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.

Distance and sector count

A direct flight to Santo Domingo 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 Dominican Republic 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 Santo Domingo 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 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.

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 Santo Domingo (SDQ) 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.

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.

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

Something needs to continue past Santo Domingo

A second sector, a border crossing or a domestic flight beyond Santo Domingo (SDQ) 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 consignment is larger than described

Measured at collection, not at the gate. If it will not fit a locker we buy a seat for it there and then and tell you the revised number before the courier moves, rather than improvising at check-in.

How jobs like this actually run

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

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.

LegalDXB → SIN

Signed originals for a company closing that could not wait for a courier network.

Collected DIFC17:40

Non-stop overnight20:50

At the notary09:15 +1

✓ Closing held on schedule.

AutomotiveSTR → DXB

A prototype part for a validation rig, crated to fit the cabin allowance.

Plant pickup09:40

Via FRA13:30

Test bench23:55

✓ Rig time kept, no week lost to freight.

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

How it moves

A seat of its own, never out of sight

The case flies belted in the cabin next to the courier, never checked in.

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

Aircraft wing above the clouds — Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, three departure boards, one operations desk watching them all.
OnBoard Courier, UAE

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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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 Arajet 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.