The sector is held by Air China, Atlas Air, China Southern Airlines and Suparna Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
ORD Chicago to PVG Shanghai
O'Hare International, the United States, to Pudong International, China. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- About twice a day
- Great circle
- 11,334 km
- Block, estimated
- 14h 09m
- Door to door
- 20h 54m
What ORD to PVG looks like
The ORD to PVG sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Chicago ORD to Shanghai PVG is an ultra long sector of 11,334 km by great circle, flown nonstop about twice a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 11,334 km, 880 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 14h 09m.
Chicago ORD is a major hub in the network held here, 295 scheduled destinations and 1,461 departures a day. Shanghai PVG has 206 destinations and 786.7 departures a day.
Shanghai runs 14 hours ahead of Chicago in January and 13 hours ahead in July, because the two ends do not change their clocks together.
The pair sits between the Americas and Asia Pacific, a corridor where the site already publishes 16 written lanes that go into customs and ground detail this page does not.
Who flies the sector, and how often
Average daily frequencies on ORD to PVG from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| ORD to PVG | 2.57 | 18 | Air China, Atlas Air, China Southern Airlines, Suparna Airlines |
| PVG to ORD | 0 | 0 | none held |
4 carriers are recorded on the sector, so a missed departure is normally a rebooking rather than a lost day.
The return leg PVG to ORD carries no scheduled nonstop at all, so a courier coming back does it with a connection.
Between them the two directions put about 18 departures a week on ORD to PVG, 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 14h 09m block time on ORD to PVG. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to ORD | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At ORD before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| ORD to PVG in the air, estimated | 849 min | 18h 39m |
| Formalities at PVG | 90 min | 20h 09m |
| Delivery run in Shanghai | 45 min | 20h 54m |
| Door to door | 1,254 min | 20h 54m |
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 ORD to PVG is 20h 54m.
A courier who leaves Chicago at 09:00 local is on the ground in Shanghai at about 13:09 local and at the door by 15:24 the following day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Shanghai, nothing leaving Chicago 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 20h 54m 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. 46 of them join ORD to PVG.
| Connecting at | ORD to hub, flights a day | Hub to PVG, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seoul ICN | 4.71 | 22.43 | 11,341 | 15h 58m |
| Nanjing NKG | 0.71 | 2.43 | 11,659 | 16h 07m |
| Osaka KIX | 0.86 | 16 | 11,756 | 16h 15m |
| Detroit DTW | 21.43 | 1.14 | 11,838 | 16h 36m |
| Tokyo HND | 1.14 | 4.43 | 11,861 | 16h 40m |
| Tokyo NRT | 4.57 | 14.86 | 11,870 | 16h 41m |
One nonstop a day means one chance a day, so the connections below are what a consignment that arrives at ORD in the afternoon actually flies on.
46 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Seoul ICN, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 4.7 times a day.
Through ICN the routing covers 11,341 km against the 11,334 km nonstop track and takes about 15h 58m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 75 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 1h 49m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Nanjing NKG at 16h 07m and Osaka KIX at 16h 15m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves Chicago, Chicago MDW is 25 km away by great circle and carries 208 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
If nothing suitable leaves Shanghai, Shanghai SHA is 45 km away by great circle and carries 60 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.
Shanghai PVG, night operations: Operates around the clock.
Plan Chicago to Shanghai 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 ORD to PVG 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 ORD airport entry
- The PVG airport entry
- Hand carry into the United States
- Hand carry into China
- The written lane, Abu Dhabi to Chicago
- The written lane, Chicago to Frankfurt
- The written lane, Chicago to Queretaro
- The route calculator
More pairs through ORD and PVG: Chicago to Boston, Chicago to Atlanta, London to Chicago, San Francisco to Chicago, Seattle to Chicago, Chicago to Detroit, Chicago to Paris, Chicago to Dublin.