The sector is held by Antrak Air, ASL Airlines Belgium, Jet2 and TUI Airways.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
EMA Derby and Nottingham to MAN Manchester
East Midlands Airport, the United Kingdom, to Manchester Airport, the United Kingdom. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- About once a day
- Great circle
- 86 km
- Block, estimated
- 38 min
- Door to door
- 7h 23m
What EMA to MAN looks like
The EMA to MAN sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Derby and Nottingham EMA to Manchester MAN is a short sector of 86 km by great circle, flown nonstop about once a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 86 km, 720 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 38 min.
Derby and Nottingham EMA is a large airport in the network held here, 91 scheduled destinations and 74.6 departures a day. Manchester MAN has 203 destinations and 374.8 departures a day.
Manchester carries about 5 times the departures of Derby and Nottingham, so a courier who has to be rebooked has far more to work with at one end of this pair than at the other.
Derby and Nottingham and Manchester keep the same clock all year, so the arrival time is the departure time plus the block and nothing else.
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 EMA to MAN from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| EMA to MAN | 1 | 7 | Antrak Air, ASL Airlines Belgium, Jet2, TUI Airways |
| MAN to EMA | 0.14 | 1 | none held |
4 carriers are recorded on the sector, so a missed departure is normally a rebooking rather than a lost day.
The two directions are not level: EMA to MAN runs about once a day, the return runs about once a week, and a round trip has to be planned around the thinner of the two.
Between them the two directions put about 8 departures a week on EMA to MAN, 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 38 min block time on EMA to MAN. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to EMA | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At EMA before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| EMA to MAN in the air, estimated | 38 min | 5h 08m |
| Formalities at MAN | 90 min | 6h 38m |
| Delivery run in Manchester | 45 min | 7h 23m |
| Door to door | 443 min | 7h 23m |
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 EMA to MAN is 7h 23m.
A courier who leaves Derby and Nottingham at 09:00 local is on the ground in Manchester at about 09:38 local and at the door by 11:53 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Manchester, the last useful departure from Derby and Nottingham is around 15:07 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. 52 of them join EMA to MAN.
| Connecting at | EMA to hub, flights a day | Hub to MAN, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Belfast BFS | 2.86 | 6.29 | 675 | 3h 00m |
| Dublin DUB | 2.57 | 22.14 | 601 | 3h 08m |
| Paris CDG | 0.57 | 8.57 | 1,092 | 4h 07m |
| Cologne CGN | 1.86 | 1.57 | 1,320 | 4h 12m |
| Bergamo BGY | 0.57 | 2.14 | 2,339 | 5h 14m |
| Barcelona BCN | 1.29 | 7.29 | 2,688 | 5h 56m |
One nonstop a day means one chance a day, so the connections below are what a consignment that arrives at EMA in the afternoon actually flies on.
52 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Belfast BFS, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about twice a day.
Through BFS the routing covers 675 km against the 86 km nonstop track and takes about 3h 00m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 60 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 2h 22m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Dublin DUB at 3h 08m and Paris CDG at 4h 07m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
The two ends are only 86 km apart in a straight line. Allowing a road track a quarter longer than that and eighty kilometres an hour, a car covers it in about 1h 21m, so a courier who misses the flight drives rather than connects, and on a short deadline the road is often the plan from the start.
If nothing suitable leaves Derby and Nottingham, Birmingham BHX is 51 km away by great circle and carries 139 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
If nothing suitable leaves Manchester, Liverpool LPL is 38 km away by great circle and carries 88 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Industry within reach of the two ends
Public manufacturing and research sites whose logistics run through EMA or MAN. Listed as industrial geography, not as customers of anyone.
- Rolls-Royce, DerbyCivil large engine assembly and test. An engine on wing that is grounded is an aircraft grounded. Logistics through Derby and Nottingham EMA.
- Airbus, Broughton, FlintshireWing manufacture for the entire commercial range. Wing components are large, scheduled and unforgiving, and the small parts that hold them up move by hand. Logistics through Manchester MAN.
- Nissan, SunderlandThe largest car plant in the United Kingdom. An island line supplied from the continent and from Japan. Logistics through Manchester MAN.
- AstraZeneca, Cambridge and MacclesfieldResearch head office and manufacturing. British research, global trial sites. Logistics through Manchester MAN.
Plan Derby and Nottingham to Manchester 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 EMA to MAN 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 EMA airport entry
- The MAN airport entry
- Hand carry into the United Kingdom
- The written lane, London to Derby
- The written lane, Abu Dhabi to Manchester
- The written lane, Dubai to Manchester
- The route calculator
More pairs through EMA and MAN: Dublin to Derby and Nottingham, Barcelona to Derby and Nottingham, Copenhagen to Derby and Nottingham, Brussels to Derby and Nottingham, Berlin to Derby and Nottingham, Derby and Nottingham to Prague, Derby and Nottingham to Stuttgart, Cologne to Derby and Nottingham.