The sector is held by Aeromexico and United Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
MEX Mexico City to SFO San Francisco
Benito Juarez International, Mexico, to San Francisco International, the United States. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 5.3 times a day
- Great circle
- 3,028 km
- Block, estimated
- 4h 09m
- Door to door
- 10h 54m
What MEX to SFO looks like
The MEX to SFO sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Mexico City MEX to San Francisco SFO is a medium haul sector of 3,028 km by great circle, flown nonstop 5.3 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 3,028 km, 880 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 4h 09m.
Mexico City MEX is a large airport in the network held here, 106 scheduled destinations and 416.7 departures a day. San Francisco SFO has 189 destinations and 656.9 departures a day.
San Francisco runs 2 hours behind of Mexico City in January and one hour behind in July, because the two ends do not change their clocks together.
The pair sits inside the Americas, a corridor where the site already publishes 13 written lanes that go into customs and ground detail this page does not.
Who flies the sector, and how often
Average daily frequencies on MEX to SFO from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| MEX to SFO | 5.29 | 37 | Aeromexico, United Airlines |
| SFO to MEX | 5.43 | 38 | Aeromexico, United Airlines |
Two carriers hold the sector, Aeromexico and United Airlines, which gives a missed departure somewhere to go without leaving the nonstop.
At 5.3 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 75 departures a week on MEX to SFO, 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 4h 09m block time on MEX to SFO. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to MEX | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At MEX before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| MEX to SFO in the air, estimated | 249 min | 8h 39m |
| Formalities at SFO | 90 min | 10h 09m |
| Delivery run in San Francisco | 45 min | 10h 54m |
| Door to door | 654 min | 10h 54m |
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 MEX to SFO is 10h 54m.
A courier who leaves Mexico City at 09:00 local is on the ground in San Francisco at about 11:09 local and at the door by 13:24 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in San Francisco, the last useful departure from Mexico City is around 13:36 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. 44 of them join MEX to SFO.
| Connecting at | MEX to hub, flights a day | Hub to SFO, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oakland OAK | 1.14 | 1.43 | 3,042 | 5h 41m |
| Los Cabos SJD | 8.14 | 1.86 | 3,189 | 6h 04m |
| Phoenix PHX | 2.29 | 13.86 | 3,063 | 6h 10m |
| Monterrey MTY | 30.86 | 1.14 | 3,187 | 6h 13m |
| Los Angeles LAX | 8.86 | 44 | 3,043 | 6h 30m |
| Las Vegas LAS | 3.43 | 21.71 | 3,092 | 6h 35m |
With 5.3 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.
44 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Oakland OAK, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about once a day.
Through OAK the routing covers 3,042 km against the 3,028 km nonstop track and takes about 5h 41m 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 32m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Los Cabos SJD at 6h 04m and Phoenix PHX at 6h 10m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves Mexico City, Mexico City NLU is 36 km away by great circle and carries 41 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
If nothing suitable leaves San Francisco, Oakland OAK is 18 km away by great circle and carries 89 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 MEX or SFO. Listed as industrial geography, not as customers of anyone.
- Volkswagen, PueblaAssembly for the North American market. German tooling, Mexican line, and an ocean in between. Logistics through Mexico City MEX.
- Genentech, South San FranciscoBiotechnology research and manufacturing. The original biotech cluster, and still the densest. Logistics through San Francisco SFO.
Plan Mexico City to San Francisco 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 MEX to SFO 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 MEX airport entry
- The SFO airport entry
- Hand carry into Mexico
- Hand carry into the United States
- The written lane, Dubai to San Francisco
- The written lane, San Francisco to Taipei
- The written lane, Seoul to San Francisco
- The route calculator
More pairs through MEX and SFO: Madrid to Mexico City, Atlanta to Mexico City, Mexico City to Monterrey, Mexico City to Guadalajara, Chicago to Mexico City, Mexico City to Houston, Sao Paulo to Mexico City, Mexico City to Los Angeles.