The sector is held by Eurowings.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
CGN Cologne to LGW London
Cologne Bonn Airport, Germany, to Gatwick Airport, the United Kingdom. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- About twice a day
- Great circle
- 514 km
- Block, estimated
- 1h 15m
- Door to door
- 8h 00m
What CGN to LGW looks like
The CGN to LGW sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Cologne CGN to London LGW is a short sector of 514 km by great circle, flown nonstop about twice a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 514 km, 720 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 1h 15m.
Cologne CGN is a major hub in the network held here, 154 scheduled destinations and 168.6 departures a day. London LGW has 203 destinations and 510.1 departures a day.
London carries about 3 times the departures of Cologne, so a courier who has to be rebooked has far more to work with at one end of this pair than at the other.
London is one hour behind of Cologne all year.
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 CGN to LGW from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| CGN to LGW | 2 | 14 | Eurowings |
| LGW to CGN | 2 | 14 | Eurowings |
One carrier holds the sector, Eurowings, so a cancellation has no second nonstop behind it and the connections below stop being theoretical.
Between them the two directions put about 28 departures a week on CGN to LGW, 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 15m block time on CGN to LGW. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to CGN | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At CGN before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| CGN to LGW in the air, estimated | 75 min | 5h 45m |
| Formalities at LGW | 90 min | 7h 15m |
| Delivery run in London | 45 min | 8h 00m |
| Door to door | 480 min | 8h 00m |
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 CGN to LGW is 8h 00m.
A courier who leaves Cologne at 09:00 local is on the ground in London at about 09:15 local and at the door by 11:30 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in London, the last useful departure from Cologne is around 15:30 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. 64 of them join CGN to LGW.
| Connecting at | CGN to hub, flights a day | Hub to LGW, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basel BSL | 0.71 | 1.86 | 1,049 | 3h 47m |
| Billund BLL | 0.71 | 1.14 | 1,359 | 3h 50m |
| Berlin BER | 4.71 | 3.14 | 1,418 | 4h 09m |
| Lyon LYS | 0.71 | 1.86 | 1,308 | 4h 10m |
| Zurich ZRH | 1.86 | 2.14 | 1,146 | 4h 12m |
| Prague PRG | 0.71 | 1.86 | 1,534 | 4h 18m |
One nonstop a day means one chance a day, so the connections below are what a consignment that arrives at CGN in the afternoon actually flies on.
64 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Basel BSL, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 5 times a week.
Through BSL the routing covers 1,049 km against the 514 km nonstop track and takes about 3h 47m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 75 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is 2h 32m more than the nonstop, which is the price of a missed departure on this pair.
Behind it, Billund BLL at 3h 50m and Berlin BER at 4h 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 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.
If nothing suitable leaves London, London LHR is 41 km away by great circle and carries 212 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.
London LGW is shut to scheduled movements between 23:30 and 06:00 local, which matters here because an aircraft leaving Cologne late arrives into a closed airport rather than a quiet one.
London LGW, night restrictions: Night movements are capped between 23:30 and 06:00 local under a seasonal quota.
Read back down the sector, a departure from Cologne later than about 23:15 local arrives at LGW after it has closed for the night, on the 1h 15m block time above.
Industry within reach of the two ends
Public manufacturing and research sites whose logistics run through CGN or LGW. Listed as industrial geography, not as customers of anyone.
- 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 Cologne to London 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 CGN to LGW 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 CGN airport entry
- The LGW airport entry
- Hand carry into Germany
- Hand carry into the United Kingdom
- The route calculator
More pairs through CGN and LGW: Berlin to Cologne, Manchester to Cologne, Cologne to Derby and Nottingham, Cologne to Prague, Stuttgart to Cologne, Cologne to Lisbon, Cologne to Dusseldorf, Cologne to Stockholm.