The sector is held by Hainan Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
CAI Cairo to SZX Shenzhen
Cairo International, Egypt, to Shenzhen Bao'an, China. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 4 times a week
- Great circle
- 8,075 km
- Block, estimated
- 10h 14m
- Door to door
- 16h 59m
What CAI to SZX looks like
The CAI to SZX sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Cairo CAI to Shenzhen SZX is an ultra long sector of 8,075 km by great circle, flown nonstop 4 times a week.
At the cruise speed this site models for 8,075 km, 880 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 10h 14m.
Cairo CAI is a large airport in the network held here, 105 scheduled destinations and 311.7 departures a day. Shenzhen SZX has 157 destinations and 574.7 departures a day.
Shenzhen runs 6 hours ahead of Cairo in January and 5 hours ahead in July, because the two ends do not change their clocks together.
The pair sits between Africa and Asia Pacific, a corridor where the site already publishes 1 written lanes that go into customs and ground detail this page does not.
Who flies the sector, and how often
Average daily frequencies on CAI to SZX from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| CAI to SZX | 0.57 | 4 | Hainan Airlines |
| SZX to CAI | 0.57 | 4 | Hainan Airlines |
One carrier holds the sector, Hainan Airlines, so a cancellation has no second nonstop behind it and the connections below stop being theoretical.
Between them the two directions put about 8 departures a week on CAI to SZX, 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 10h 14m block time on CAI to SZX. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to CAI | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At CAI before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| CAI to SZX in the air, estimated | 614 min | 14h 44m |
| Formalities at SZX | 90 min | 16h 14m |
| Delivery run in Shenzhen | 45 min | 16h 59m |
| Door to door | 1,019 min | 16h 59m |
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 CAI to SZX is 16h 59m.
A courier who leaves Cairo at 09:00 local is on the ground in Shenzhen at about 01:14 local and at the door by 03:29 the following day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Shenzhen, nothing leaving Cairo inside a normal working day arrives in time, so this pair is an overnight and a next morning delivery rather than a same day one.
At 16h 59m the mission is past the sixteen hour duty day a single courier is planned against, so it is quoted with a rest at the far end or with a second courier, and never as a turnaround.
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. 18 of them join CAI to SZX.
| Connecting at | CAI to hub, flights a day | Hub to SZX, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dubai DXB | 10 | 1.14 | 8,315 | 12h 41m |
| Beijing PEK | 1.14 | 28.43 | 9,490 | 14h 04m |
| Shanghai PVG | 1.71 | 17.71 | 9,602 | 14h 09m |
| Rome FCO | 4.71 | 0.57 | 11,399 | 16h 23m |
| London LHR | 5.71 | 0.86 | 13,128 | 18h 18m |
| Chicago ORD | 0.57 | 1.43 | 22,366 | 29h 27m |
18 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Dubai DXB, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about once a day.
Through DXB the routing covers 8,315 km against the 8,075 km nonstop track and takes about 12h 41m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 90 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 2h 27m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Beijing PEK at 14h 04m and Shanghai PVG at 14h 09m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves Shenzhen, Hong Kong HKG is 38 km away by great circle and carries 144 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Plan Cairo to Shenzhen 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 CAI to SZX 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 CAI airport entry
- The SZX airport entry
- Hand carry into Egypt
- Hand carry into China
- The written lane, Cairo to Athens
- The written lane, Cairo to Sharjah
- The written lane, Sharjah to Cairo
- The route calculator
More pairs through CAI and SZX: Jeddah to Cairo, Cairo to Dubai, Cairo to Riyadh, Cairo to Abu Dhabi, Frankfurt to Cairo, Cairo to Milan, Cairo to Doha, Istanbul to Cairo.