The sector is held by Air Canada.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
SAN San Diego to YVR Vancouver
San Diego International, the United States, to Vancouver International, Canada. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 3.9 times a day
- Great circle
- 1,897 km
- Block, estimated
- 2h 55m
- Door to door
- 9h 40m
What SAN to YVR looks like
The SAN to YVR sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
San Diego SAN to Vancouver YVR is a medium haul sector of 1,897 km by great circle, flown nonstop 3.9 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 1,897 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 2h 55m.
San Diego SAN is a large airport in the network held here, 123 scheduled destinations and 409.4 departures a day. Vancouver YVR has 125 destinations and 409.9 departures a day.
Vancouver runs one hour ahead of San Diego in January and no time shift at all 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 SAN to YVR from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAN to YVR | 3.86 | 27 | Air Canada |
| YVR to SAN | 0.43 | 3 | none held |
One carrier holds the sector, Air Canada, so a cancellation has no second nonstop behind it and the connections below stop being theoretical.
The two directions are not level: SAN to YVR runs 3.9 times a day, the return runs 3 times a week, and a round trip has to be planned around the thinner of the two.
At 3.9 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 30 departures a week on SAN to YVR, 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 55m block time on SAN to YVR. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to SAN | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At SAN before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| SAN to YVR in the air, estimated | 175 min | 7h 25m |
| Formalities at YVR | 90 min | 8h 55m |
| Delivery run in Vancouver | 45 min | 9h 40m |
| Door to door | 580 min | 9h 40m |
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 SAN to YVR is 9h 40m.
A courier who leaves San Diego at 09:00 local is on the ground in Vancouver at about 12:55 local and at the door by 15:10 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Vancouver, the last useful departure from San Diego is around 11:50 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. 38 of them join SAN to YVR.
| Connecting at | SAN to hub, flights a day | Hub to YVR, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seattle SEA | 17.86 | 19.71 | 1,897 | 4h 43m |
| Portland PDX | 9 | 5.86 | 1,906 | 4h 46m |
| San Francisco SFO | 28 | 10.43 | 2,008 | 4h 58m |
| Los Angeles LAX | 8.23 | 9.43 | 1,917 | 4h 59m |
| Las Vegas LAS | 19.57 | 3.43 | 2,013 | 5h 09m |
| Salt Lake City SLC | 12.43 | 3.43 | 2,290 | 5h 10m |
With 3.9 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.
38 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Seattle SEA, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 17.9 times a day.
Through SEA the routing covers 1,897 km against the 1,897 km nonstop track and takes about 4h 43m 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 48m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Portland PDX at 4h 46m and San Francisco SFO at 4h 58m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves San Diego, Tijuana TIJ is 30 km away by great circle and carries 45 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
If nothing suitable leaves Vancouver, Victoria YYJ is 63 km away by great circle and carries 22 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Plan San Diego to Vancouver 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 SAN to YVR 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 SAN airport entry
- The YVR airport entry
- Hand carry into the United States
- Hand carry into Canada
- The written lane, San Diego to Tijuana
- The written lane, Dubai to Vancouver
- The written lane, Hong Kong to Vancouver
- The route calculator
More pairs through SAN and YVR: San Diego to San Francisco, San Diego to Seattle, San Diego to Atlanta, San Diego to Boston, Chicago to San Diego, Phoenix to San Diego, San Diego to London, Detroit to San Diego.