The sector is held by Sprint Air.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
BSL Basel to CGN Cologne
EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse, France, to Cologne Bonn Airport, Germany. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 4 times a week
- Great circle
- 365 km
- Block, estimated
- 1h 02m
- Door to door
- 7h 47m
What BSL to CGN looks like
The BSL to CGN sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Basel BSL to Cologne CGN is a short sector of 365 km by great circle, flown nonstop 4 times a week.
At the cruise speed this site models for 365 km, 720 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 1h 02m.
Basel BSL is a large airport in the network held here, 122 scheduled destinations and 125.1 departures a day. Cologne CGN has 154 destinations and 168.6 departures a day.
Basel and Cologne keep the same clock all year, so the arrival time is the departure time plus the block and nothing else.
The pair sits inside Europe, a corridor where the site already publishes 14 written lanes that go into customs and ground detail this page does not.
Who flies the sector, and how often
Average daily frequencies on BSL to CGN from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| BSL to CGN | 0.57 | 4 | Sprint Air |
| CGN to BSL | 0.71 | 5 | Sprint Air |
One carrier holds the sector, Sprint Air, so a cancellation has no second nonstop behind it and the connections below stop being theoretical.
Between them the two directions put about 9 departures a week on BSL to CGN, which is the number that decides whether a seat can be found today or on Thursday.
The clock from collection to signature
The same ground timings the route calculator starts from, applied to the 1h 02m block time on BSL to CGN. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to BSL | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At BSL before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| BSL to CGN in the air, estimated | 62 min | 5h 32m |
| Formalities at CGN | 90 min | 7h 02m |
| Delivery run in Cologne | 45 min | 7h 47m |
| Door to door | 467 min | 7h 47m |
On the desk standard ground timings, ninety minutes to collect and reach the airport, three hours at the airport before departure, ninety minutes of arrival formalities and a forty five minute delivery run, the door to door figure for BSL to CGN is 7h 47m.
A courier who leaves Basel at 09:00 local is on the ground in Cologne at about 10:02 local and at the door by 12:17 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Cologne, the last useful departure from Basel is around 14:43 local.
When the nonstop does not work
Every airport that joins the two ends, ranked by when they land, among the ones whose weaker leg is dependable enough to plan on. Connection time is allowed for the size of the hub. 65 of them join BSL to CGN.
| Connecting at | BSL to hub, flights a day | Hub to CGN, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leipzig LEJ | 1 | 1.29 | 907 | 3h 20m |
| Munich MUC | 2.14 | 6.29 | 764 | 3h 38m |
| Paris CDG | 3.14 | 1.43 | 789 | 3h 39m |
| Prague PRG | 0.57 | 0.57 | 1,076 | 3h 50m |
| Nice NCE | 1.86 | 1.14 | 1,240 | 3h 55m |
| Berlin BER | 2 | 4.86 | 1,147 | 3h 56m |
65 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Leipzig LEJ, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about once a day.
Through LEJ the routing covers 907 km against the 365 km nonstop track and takes about 3h 20m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 60 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 2h 18m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Munich MUC at 3h 38m and Paris CDG at 3h 39m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
The two ends are only 365 km apart in a straight line. Allowing a road track a quarter longer than that and eighty kilometres an hour, a car covers it in about 5h 42m, so a courier who misses the flight drives rather than connects, and on a short deadline the road is often the plan from the start.
If nothing suitable leaves Basel, Zurich ZRH is 78 km away by great circle and carries 223 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
If nothing suitable leaves Cologne, Dusseldorf DUS is 54 km away by great circle and carries 176 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Restricted hours at either end
Widely documented operating restrictions, checked 2026-09-07. Exemptions and seasonal variations exist, so confirm with the carrier before relying on any of them.
Basel BSL is shut to scheduled movements between 23:00 and 06:00 local, so a collection in Basel that runs late does not simply catch a later flight, it waits for the morning and loses a working day in Cologne.
Basel BSL, night restrictions: Scheduled movements are restricted between 23:00 and 06:00 local under the airport's noise rules.
Industry within reach of the two ends
Public manufacturing and research sites whose logistics run through BSL or CGN. Listed as industrial geography, not as customers of anyone.
- Novartis, BaselResearch and manufacturing at the group head office. Basel sits where three countries meet and uses three airports. Logistics through Basel BSL.
- Roche, Basel and KaiseraugstPharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Diagnostics move on shorter clocks than most freight can hold. Logistics through Basel BSL.
- Lonza, Visp and BaselContract manufacturing of biologics. Contract manufacturing runs to somebody else's deadline, which makes it tighter. Logistics through Basel BSL.
- Ford, Dearborn and CologneAssembly on both sides of the Atlantic. A single engineering organisation split across two continents. Logistics through Cologne CGN.
- Bayer, Leverkusen and WuppertalPharmaceutical research and production. The Rhineland cluster, two airports, one region. Logistics through Cologne CGN.
Plan Basel to Cologne yourself
The same tool the dispatchers use, open to anybody and free. It is loaded with this pair already. Change either end, add a stopover or a preferred airline, and it works out the connection, the transit and the door to door clock, with the real departures underneath. Put it on your own site if it is useful to you.
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Restrictions
Where this came from, and where to look next
- Carriers and frequencies: AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics, retrieved 2026-09-07. Average daily flights, not a timetable.
- Distances: great circle from published coordinates. They read short against a flown track, which is why the block time above applies a factor to them.
- Block and connection times: the same model the route calculator lower down this page runs, at the same rounding.
- Restrictions: the airport notes file, checked 2026-09-07.
- Industrial sites: public company information. Nothing here says or implies that any company named is a customer of any courier operator.
Who publishes this. OnBoard Courier is a placement desk in Dubai. An assignment is carried out by a vetted partner operator, with the desk as the single point of contact from the quote to the signature. This page exists because our own dispatchers need the answer for BSL to CGN in the twenty minutes before a promise is made, and a reference only one operator can read is not a reference. Free to read, quote and cite. Found an error? Tell us and we will correct it.
If you need something moved rather than looked up, the desk prices a hand carry in fifteen minutes.
- The BSL airport entry
- The CGN airport entry
- Hand carry into France
- Hand carry into Germany
- The route calculator
More pairs through BSL and CGN: Basel to Frankfurt, Berlin to Basel, Basel to Hamburg, Basel to Budapest, Basel to Prague, Basel to Lisbon, Basel to Tel Aviv, Basel to Dusseldorf.