U2 · hub London (LGW) · independent

Hand carry on easyJet

Useful for the last European sector when the timing beats the train.

One person beats a parcel networkon easyJet

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 easyJet, 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 easyJet fits in an OBC routing

easyJet is based in United Kingdom and operates from London (LGW) independently of the global alliances. For us a carrier is not a brand preference, it is a departure time. We book easyJet 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 easyJet 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 easyJet

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

on easyJet: 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 easyJet 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 U2 code that yields 1,081 city pairs across 152 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.

152airports on this carrier

37countries and territories reached

1,081scheduled city pairs held

2,413average daily flights across them

The schedule the desk holds carries the U2 code on 1,081 city pairs, reaching 152 airports in 37 countries and territories. Some of those sectors are flown by OnBoard Courier easyJet 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. 82.9 per cent of those airports sit on European time zones, and the next largest block is on African time zones.

The longest sector held for the carrier is Manchester (MAN) to Espargos (SID) at about 4,449 km, and the shortest is Treviso (TSF) to Venice (VCE) at about 20 km. 564 of the pairs are under 1,500 km and 0 run past 5,000 km, a medium haul shape that usually joins a Gulf departure at a single interchange. The airport that appears most often on those pairs is London (LGW), on 105 of them, which is 9.7 per cent of everything held under this code.

The thickest sector under the code is Lisbon (LIS) to Madrid (MAD) at about 21.9 movements a day, which across a full day is roughly one every 1.1 hours. On a sector at that cadence a missed departure costs a wait rather than a night. That sector does not touch London (LGW), 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. 189 of the 1,081 pairs run four or more times a day and 476 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 London (LGW) the code leans on Manchester (MAN) on 84, Bristol (BRS) on 80, Geneva (GVA) on 80 pairs respectively, and those are the airports a dispatcher looks at second when the first routing is full.

The sectors that carry the U2 code most often

From	To	Country	Flights a day	km	Open it
Lisbon LIS	Madrid MAD	Spain	21.9	513	the pair page
Málaga AGP	London LGW	the United Kingdom	18.9	1,645	the pair page
Paris CDG	Nice NCE	France	16.9	695	plan this
Funchal FNC	Lisbon LIS	Portugal	16	965	plan this
Barcelona BCN	London LGW	the United Kingdom	15.2	1,109	plan this
Barcelona BCN	Lisbon LIS	Portugal	15	994	the pair page
London LGW	Palma De Mallorca PMI	Spain	14.9	1,309	the pair page
Palma De Mallorca PMI	Zurich ZRH	Switzerland	14	996	plan this
Faro FAO	London LGW	the United Kingdom	13.6	1,688	the pair page
Rome FCO	Frankfurt-am-Main FRA	Germany	13.6	958	the pair page
Nice NCE	Paris ORY	France	13.4	676	the pair page
Catania CTA	Milan MXP	Italy	12.7	1,049	plan this
Berlin BER	Zurich ZRH	Switzerland	12.3	648	the pair page
Alicante ALC	London LGW	the United Kingdom	12.3	1,431	the pair page
Porto OPO	Paris ORY	France	12.3	1,200	the pair page
Manchester MAN	Palma De Mallorca PMI	Spain	12	1,581	the pair page

The 16 sectors the U2 code appears on most often, out of 1,081. 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 London from the Gulf

The schedule the desk holds shows no U2 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 London (LGW), and OnBoard Courier easyJet carries the second.

UAE gateway	Operated by	Flights a day	km	Open it
Dubai DXB	Emirates	4.6	5,473	plan this
Sharjah SHJ	Air Arabia	2.3	5,477	plan this

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

Night restrictions on the airports the U2 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 152 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.

London (LGW), night restrictions. Night movements are capped between 23:30 and 06:00 local under a seasonal quota.
Geneva (GVA), night restrictions. No scheduled movements between midnight and 06:00 local.
Bâle/Mulhouse (BSL), night restrictions. Scheduled movements are restricted between 23:00 and 06:00 local under the airport's noise rules.
Berlin (BER), night restrictions. Core quiet period from midnight to 05:00 local, with restricted movements from 22:00 and until 06:00.
Amsterdam (AMS), night restrictions. Night operations between 23:00 and 07:00 local are limited by an annual cap and runway rules.
Paris (CDG), night restrictions. Scheduled movements between midnight and 05:00 local are limited to a fixed annual number of slots.

Published lanes that carry the U2 code

The site publishes a page for 346 courier lanes. OnBoard Courier easyJet appears in the schedule on one of them, and the one it flies most is Munich to Rome at about 10.4 movements a day. That overlap is the honest test of whether a carrier is useful to this desk rather than merely famous.

Munich to Rome, about 10.4 scheduled flights a day on the busier direction, 729 km.

The countries the U2 code opens

Of the 37 countries and territories reached, 19 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 France with 20 airports on this code. The country desk for United Kingdom sets out the customs practice, the working hours and the road legs behind these airports.

France (20 airports), Spain (19 airports), United Kingdom (18 airports), Italy (17 airports), Greece (14 airports), Germany (6 airports), Egypt (5 airports), Portugal (5 airports), Morocco (5 airports), Croatia (4 airports).

Where to go next on the U2 network

Each of the 152 airports above has its own atlas entry with the full destination list, and each of the 1,081 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 London (LGW), the route calculator with Dubai to LGW 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 easyJet regularly appears in our routings, and the pages that describe those lanes in detail. If you need a specific city on easyJet, ask and we will check the live schedule.

Country page: United Kingdom →London Manchester Birmingham Aberdeen (ABZ)Bristol (BRS)

Markets in Europe:

Germany Austria Switzerland United Kingdom France Italy Spain Netherlands Belgium Ireland All countries →

On board courier vs air cargo

Whether the seat is on easyJet 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 easyJet

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

01Are you an agent or partner of easyJet?

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 easyJet?

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 easyJet?

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 easyJet?

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 easyJet?

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 easyJet 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.

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.

What that adds up to for London 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 London 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 London 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

We need four things before we can say anything useful: what is inside, what it is worth, where exactly it has to be, and by when. Not a category, the actual item. “Electronic component” and “lithium battery pack” are the same box to you and two entirely different answers for a flight to London.

Minute 15 to 45

We screen it and price it

We check three things at once: whether we may lawfully carry it, whether United Kingdom will let it in without a permit we do not have, and whether it physically fits an aircraft cabin. Only then do you get a fixed price, and the price includes the ticket, the courier fee, transfers and a hotel where an overnight is unavoidable.

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 London 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 London 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 London (LGW).

On arrival

Customs, then a signature

At London (LGW) the goods are declared properly, a commercial consignment goes through the red channel, and a courier who chooses the green channel to save twenty minutes has committed an offence rather than a shortcut. Delivery follows immediately, against a signed and timestamped receipt.

The paperwork that decides how fast London 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 London (LGW).

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 United Kingdom 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 United Kingdom 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 United Kingdom 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 United Kingdom 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 United Kingdom 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 London (LGW) into an afternoon.

What a London 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.

Visas and positioning

If the routing to United Kingdom 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.

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 London quote.

The ground legs at both ends

Collection in the Emirates and delivery beyond London (LGW) 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.

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 United Kingdom, and anything you ask for after departure that changes the routing.

Distance and sector count

A direct flight to London 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 United Kingdom sit with the consignee unless we have agreed otherwise in writing.

Dubai skyline at dusk — The race for excellence has no finish line.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum

What can go wrong on a London 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 London (LGW) 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.

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

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 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 consignee is unreachable

We confirm the receiving party and a working phone number before the courier departs, and we agree a fallback in London, a second authorised person, or a secure hold, so that a delivery does not fail because someone went into a meeting.

How jobs like this actually run

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

EventsLAS → RUH

A show-control console after a failure during load-in.

Vendor pickup20:10

Two-leg routing23:30

Front of house07:45 +2

✓ Doors opened on time.

FashionMXP → DXB

Runway samples finished in Milan on Thursday, the show was Saturday.

Atelier pickup18:00

Morning departure09:35 +1

Backstage19:20 +1

✓ Every look on the rail before the rehearsal.

BankingZRH → DXB

Instruments that required a named carrier and a witnessed handover.

Vault release10:05

Non-stop13:40

Counter-signed22:10

✓ Both signatures on one timeline.

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

How it moves

Signed for at the door, on time

Proof of delivery with a name and a minute, not a tracking guess.

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?

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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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 easyJet 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.