The sector is held by SriLankan Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
CMB Colombo to NRT Tokyo
Bandaranaike International, Sri Lanka, to Narita International, Japan. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 4 times a week
- Great circle
- 6,894 km
- Block, estimated
- 8h 48m
- Door to door
- 15h 33m
What CMB to NRT looks like
The CMB to NRT sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Colombo CMB to Tokyo NRT is a long haul sector of 6,894 km by great circle, flown nonstop 4 times a week.
At the cruise speed this site models for 6,894 km, 880 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 8h 48m.
Colombo CMB is a mid sized airport in the network held here, 45 scheduled destinations and 93.2 departures a day. Tokyo NRT has 117 destinations and 361.5 departures a day.
Tokyo carries about 3.9 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.
Tokyo is 3.5 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 NRT from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| CMB to NRT | 0.57 | 4 | SriLankan Airlines |
| NRT to CMB | 0.71 | 5 | SriLankan Airlines |
One carrier holds the sector, SriLankan Airlines, so a cancellation has no second nonstop behind it and the connections below stop being theoretical.
Between them the two directions put about 9 departures a week on CMB to NRT, 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 8h 48m block time on CMB to NRT. 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 NRT in the air, estimated | 528 min | 13h 18m |
| Formalities at NRT | 90 min | 14h 48m |
| Delivery run in Tokyo | 45 min | 15h 33m |
| Door to door | 933 min | 15h 33m |
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 NRT is 15h 33m.
A courier who leaves Colombo at 09:00 local is on the ground in Tokyo at about 21:18 local and at the door by 23:33 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Tokyo, nothing leaving Colombo 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 15h 33m 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. 22 of them join CMB to NRT.
| Connecting at | CMB to hub, flights a day | Hub to NRT, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bangkok DMK | 0.86 | 1.86 | 7,029 | 10h 39m |
| Guangzhou CAN | 0.57 | 0.71 | 6,939 | 10h 50m |
| Hong Kong HKG | 1.14 | 22.86 | 6,974 | 10h 52m |
| Bangkok BKK | 3.43 | 8.14 | 7,041 | 10h 54m |
| Shanghai PVG | 1.14 | 11.71 | 6,895 | 10h 57m |
| Ho Chi Minh City SGN | 0.71 | 2.29 | 7,349 | 11h 04m |
22 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Bangkok DMK, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 6 times a week.
Through DMK the routing covers 7,029 km against the 6,894 km nonstop track and takes about 10h 39m 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 51m 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 10h 50m and Hong Kong HKG at 10h 52m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves Tokyo, Tokyo HND is 60 km away by great circle and carries 105 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.
Tokyo NRT is shut to scheduled movements between 23:00 and 06:00 local, which matters here because an aircraft leaving Colombo late arrives into a closed airport rather than a quiet one.
Tokyo NRT, night restrictions: Scheduled movements are limited between 23:00 and 06:00 local; late departures usually route through Haneda instead.
Read back down the sector, a departure from Colombo later than about 10:42 local arrives at NRT after it has closed for the night, on the 8h 48m block time above.
Plan Colombo to Tokyo 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 NRT 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 NRT airport entry
- Hand carry into Sri Lanka
- Hand carry into Japan
- 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 NRT: 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.