The sector is held by Air China.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
CMB Colombo to TFU Chengdu
Bandaranaike International, Sri Lanka, to Chengdu Shuangliu, China. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 3 times a week
- Great circle
- 3,629 km
- Block, estimated
- 4h 52m
- Door to door
- 11h 37m
What CMB to TFU looks like
The CMB to TFU sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Colombo CMB to Chengdu TFU is a long haul sector of 3,629 km by great circle, flown nonstop 3 times a week.
At the cruise speed this site models for 3,629 km, 880 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 4h 52m.
Colombo CMB is a mid sized airport in the network held here, 45 scheduled destinations and 93.2 departures a day. Chengdu TFU has 173 destinations and 533.1 departures a day.
Chengdu carries about 5.7 times the departures of Colombo, so a courier who has to be rebooked has far more to work with at one end of this pair than at the other.
Chengdu is 2.5 hours ahead of Colombo all year.
The pair sits inside 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 CMB to TFU from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| CMB to TFU | 0.43 | 3 | Air China |
| TFU to CMB | 0.57 | 4 | Air China |
One carrier holds the sector, Air China, so a cancellation has no second nonstop behind it and the connections below stop being theoretical.
Between them the two directions put about 7 departures a week on CMB to TFU, 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 4h 52m block time on CMB to TFU. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to CMB | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At CMB before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| CMB to TFU in the air, estimated | 292 min | 9h 22m |
| Formalities at TFU | 90 min | 10h 52m |
| Delivery run in Chengdu | 45 min | 11h 37m |
| Door to door | 697 min | 11h 37m |
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 CMB to TFU is 11h 37m.
A courier who leaves Colombo at 09:00 local is on the ground in Chengdu at about 16:22 local and at the door by 18:37 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Chengdu, the last useful departure from Colombo is around 08:23 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. 19 of them join CMB to TFU.
| Connecting at | CMB to hub, flights a day | Hub to TFU, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kunming KMG | 0.57 | 6.37 | 3,754 | 6h 56m |
| Kathmandu KTM | 0.57 | 1.86 | 4,229 | 7h 24m |
| Bangkok DMK | 0.86 | 1.71 | 4,249 | 7h 26m |
| Bangkok BKK | 3.43 | 7 | 4,280 | 7h 43m |
| Guangzhou CAN | 0.57 | 18.86 | 5,162 | 8h 33m |
| Ho Chi Minh City SGN | 0.71 | 1.57 | 5,146 | 8h 34m |
19 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Kunming KMG, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 4 times a week.
Through KMG the routing covers 3,754 km against the 3,629 km nonstop track and takes about 6h 56m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 75 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 2h 04m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Kathmandu KTM at 7h 24m and Bangkok DMK at 7h 26m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves Chengdu, Chengdu CTU is 56 km away by great circle and carries 67 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Plan Colombo to Chengdu 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.
min
min
min
min
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 CMB to TFU 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 CMB airport entry
- The TFU airport entry
- Hand carry into Sri Lanka
- Hand carry into China
- The written lane, Abu Dhabi to Colombo
- The written lane, Colombo to Sharjah
- The written lane, Dubai to Colombo
- The route calculator
More pairs through CMB and TFU: Singapore to Colombo, Colombo to Doha, Kuala Lumpur to Colombo, Frankfurt to Colombo, Colombo to Delhi, Colombo to Kuwait City, Colombo to Chennai, Bangkok to Colombo.