The sector is held by China Eastern Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
CMB Colombo to PVG Shanghai
Bandaranaike International, Sri Lanka, to Pudong International, China. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- About once a day
- Great circle
- 5,099 km
- Block, estimated
- 6h 39m
- Door to door
- 13h 24m
What CMB to PVG looks like
The CMB to PVG sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Colombo CMB to Shanghai PVG is a long haul sector of 5,099 km by great circle, flown nonstop about once a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 5,099 km, 880 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 6h 39m.
Colombo CMB is a mid sized airport in the network held here, 45 scheduled destinations and 93.2 departures a day. Shanghai PVG has 206 destinations and 786.7 departures a day.
Shanghai carries about 8.4 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.
Shanghai 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 PVG from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| CMB to PVG | 1.14 | 8 | China Eastern Airlines |
| PVG to CMB | 1.14 | 8 | China Eastern Airlines |
One carrier holds the sector, China Eastern Airlines, so a cancellation has no second nonstop behind it and the connections below stop being theoretical.
Between them the two directions put about 16 departures a week on CMB 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 6h 39m block time on CMB 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 CMB | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At CMB before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| CMB to PVG in the air, estimated | 399 min | 11h 09m |
| Formalities at PVG | 90 min | 12h 39m |
| Delivery run in Shanghai | 45 min | 13h 24m |
| Door to door | 804 min | 13h 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 PVG is 13h 24m.
A courier who leaves Colombo at 09:00 local is on the ground in Shanghai at about 18:09 local and at the door by 20:24 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Shanghai, the last useful departure from Colombo is around 06:36 local.
At 13h 24m the mission uses most of a sixteen hour duty day, which leaves no room for a delay before a rest at the far end becomes the honest answer.
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. 23 of them join CMB to PVG.
| Connecting at | CMB to hub, flights a day | Hub to PVG, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kunming KMG | 0.57 | 13.43 | 5,122 | 8h 34m |
| Guangzhou CAN | 0.57 | 10.29 | 5,198 | 8h 36m |
| Hong Kong HKG | 1.14 | 23.14 | 5,268 | 8h 41m |
| Bangkok BKK | 3.43 | 16.43 | 5,289 | 9h 00m |
| Ho Chi Minh City SGN | 0.71 | 6 | 5,712 | 9h 17m |
| Kuala Lumpur KUL | 5.71 | 11.71 | 6,264 | 9h 58m |
One nonstop a day means one chance a day, so the connections below are what a consignment that arrives at CMB in the afternoon actually flies on.
23 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 5,122 km against the 5,099 km nonstop track and takes about 8h 34m 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 55m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Guangzhou CAN at 8h 36m and Hong Kong HKG at 8h 41m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
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 Colombo 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 CMB 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 CMB airport entry
- The PVG 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 PVG: 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.