The sector is held by BA Euroflyer, British Airways, easyJet, Jet2 and Wizz Air UK.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
LGW London to FAO Faro
Gatwick Airport, the United Kingdom, to Faro Airport, Portugal. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 13.6 times a day
- Great circle
- 1,688 km
- Block, estimated
- 2h 39m
- Door to door
- 9h 24m
What LGW to FAO looks like
The LGW to FAO sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
London LGW to Faro FAO is a medium haul sector of 1,688 km by great circle, flown nonstop 13.6 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 1,688 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 2h 39m.
London LGW is a major hub in the network held here, 203 scheduled destinations and 510.1 departures a day. Faro FAO has 87 destinations and 132.3 departures a day.
London carries about 3.9 times the departures of Faro, so a courier who has to be rebooked has far more to work with at one end of this pair than at the other.
London and Faro 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 LGW to FAO from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| LGW to FAO | 13.57 | 95 | BA Euroflyer, British Airways, easyJet, Jet2, Wizz Air UK |
| FAO to LGW | 9.14 | 64 | BA Euroflyer, easyJet, Jet2, Wizz Air UK |
5 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: LGW to FAO runs 13.6 times a day, the return runs 9.1 times a day, and a round trip has to be planned around the thinner of the two.
At 13.6 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 159 departures a week on LGW to FAO, 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 2h 39m block time on LGW to FAO. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to LGW | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At LGW before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| LGW to FAO in the air, estimated | 159 min | 7h 09m |
| Formalities at FAO | 90 min | 8h 39m |
| Delivery run in Faro | 45 min | 9h 24m |
| Door to door | 564 min | 9h 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 LGW to FAO is 9h 24m.
A courier who leaves London at 09:00 local is on the ground in Faro at about 11:39 local and at the door by 13:54 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Faro, the last useful departure from London is around 13:06 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. 45 of them join LGW to FAO.
| Connecting at | LGW to hub, flights a day | Hub to FAO, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nantes NTE | 2 | 1.43 | 1,698 | 4h 15m |
| Lisbon LIS | 4.86 | 2.86 | 1,764 | 4h 33m |
| Porto OPO | 7.43 | 3.57 | 1,753 | 4h 35m |
| Madrid MAD | 5.71 | 2.57 | 1,756 | 4h 51m |
| Cork ORK | 1.14 | 1.86 | 2,228 | 4h 57m |
| Lyon LYS | 1.71 | 1.43 | 2,172 | 5h 09m |
With 13.6 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.
45 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Nantes NTE, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about once a day.
Through NTE the routing covers 1,698 km against the 1,688 km nonstop track and takes about 4h 15m 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 36m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Lisbon LIS at 4h 33m and Porto OPO at 4h 35m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves London, London LHR is 41 km away by great circle and carries 212 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
If nothing suitable leaves Faro, Seville SVQ is 189 km away by great circle and carries 79 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.
London LGW is shut to scheduled movements between 23:30 and 06:00 local, so a collection in London that runs late does not simply catch a later flight, it waits for the morning and loses a working day in Faro.
London LGW, night restrictions: Night movements are capped between 23:30 and 06:00 local under a seasonal quota.
Plan London to Faro 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 LGW to FAO 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 LGW airport entry
- The FAO airport entry
- Hand carry into the United Kingdom
- Hand carry into Portugal
- The route calculator
More pairs through LGW and FAO: Derby and Nottingham to Faro, Eindhoven to Faro, Hamburg to Faro, Stuttgart to Faro, Hannover to Faro, Paris to Faro, Toulouse to Faro, Faro to Bristol.