The sector is held by Chongqing Airlines, Emirates, FitsAir, flydubai, Gulf Air and SriLankan Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
CMB Colombo to MLE Male
Bandaranaike International, Sri Lanka, to Ibrahim Nasir International, the Maldives. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 8.6 times a day
- Great circle
- 778 km
- Block, estimated
- 1h 39m
- Door to door
- 8h 24m
What CMB to MLE looks like
The CMB to MLE sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Colombo CMB to Male MLE is a short sector of 778 km by great circle, flown nonstop 8.6 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 778 km, 720 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 1h 39m.
Colombo CMB is a mid sized airport in the network held here, 45 scheduled destinations and 93.2 departures a day. Male MLE has 38 destinations and 60.9 departures a day.
Male is 0.5 hours behind of Colombo all year.
The pair sits between Asia Pacific and the rest of the world, a corridor the written lanes do not cover, which is the reason a computed page for it exists at all.
Who flies the sector, and how often
Average daily frequencies on CMB to MLE from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| CMB to MLE | 8.57 | 60 | Chongqing Airlines, Emirates, FitsAir, flydubai, Gulf Air, SriLankan Airlines |
| MLE to CMB | 8.57 | 60 | Chongqing Airlines, Emirates, FitsAir, flydubai, Gulf Air, SriLankan Airlines |
6 carriers are recorded on the sector, so a missed departure is normally a rebooking rather than a lost day.
At 8.6 times a day there is usually another departure within a few hours, which is what makes a same day booking on this pair realistic.
Between them the two directions put about 120 departures a week on CMB to MLE, 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 39m block time on CMB to MLE. 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 MLE in the air, estimated | 99 min | 6h 09m |
| Formalities at MLE | 90 min | 7h 39m |
| Delivery run in Male | 45 min | 8h 24m |
| Door to door | 504 min | 8h 24m |
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 MLE is 8h 24m.
A courier who leaves Colombo at 09:00 local is on the ground in Male at about 10:09 local and at the door by 12:24 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Male, the last useful departure from Colombo is around 14:36 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. 21 of them join CMB to MLE.
| Connecting at | CMB to hub, flights a day | Hub to MLE, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thiruvananthapuram TRV | 0.57 | 1.14 | 964 | 3h 26m |
| Kochi COK | 1.14 | 1.71 | 1,241 | 3h 50m |
| Bangalore BLR | 2.71 | 1.14 | 1,811 | 4h 27m |
| Mumbai BOM | 1.51 | 0.86 | 3,184 | 6h 19m |
| Dhaka DAC | 1.57 | 0.86 | 5,003 | 8h 23m |
| Bangkok DMK | 0.86 | 0.86 | 5,544 | 8h 51m |
With 8.6 times a day on the nonstop, a connection here is a disruption plan rather than a routing, and it is listed because a closed runway or a cancellation wave is exactly when nobody has time to work it out.
21 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Thiruvananthapuram TRV, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 4 times a week.
Through TRV the routing covers 964 km against the 778 km nonstop track and takes about 3h 26m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 60 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 1h 47m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Kochi COK at 3h 50m and Bangalore BLR at 4h 27m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
Plan Colombo to Male 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 MLE 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 MLE airport entry
- Hand carry into Sri Lanka
- Hand carry into the Maldives
- 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 MLE: 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.