The sector is held by Air China and United Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
SFO San Francisco to PEK Beijing
San Francisco International, the United States, to Capital International, China. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- About once a day
- Great circle
- 9,494 km
- Block, estimated
- 11h 56m
- Door to door
- 18h 41m
What SFO to PEK looks like
The SFO to PEK sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
San Francisco SFO to Beijing PEK is an ultra long sector of 9,494 km by great circle, flown nonstop about once a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 9,494 km, 880 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 11h 56m.
San Francisco SFO is a major hub in the network held here, 189 scheduled destinations and 656.9 departures a day. Beijing PEK has 201 destinations and 651.4 departures a day.
Beijing runs 16 hours ahead of San Francisco in January and 15 hours ahead in July, because the two ends do not change their clocks together.
The pair sits between the Americas and 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 SFO to PEK from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| SFO to PEK | 1.43 | 10 | Air China, United Airlines |
| PEK to SFO | 1.43 | 10 | Air China, United Airlines |
Two carriers hold the sector, Air China and United Airlines, which gives a missed departure somewhere to go without leaving the nonstop.
Between them the two directions put about 20 departures a week on SFO to PEK, 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 11h 56m block time on SFO to PEK. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to SFO | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At SFO before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| SFO to PEK in the air, estimated | 716 min | 16h 26m |
| Formalities at PEK | 90 min | 17h 56m |
| Delivery run in Beijing | 45 min | 18h 41m |
| Door to door | 1,121 min | 18h 41m |
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 SFO to PEK is 18h 41m.
A courier who leaves San Francisco at 09:00 local is on the ground in Beijing at about 12:56 local and at the door by 15:11 the following day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Beijing, nothing leaving San Francisco 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 18h 41m the mission is past the sixteen hour duty day a single courier is planned against, so it is quoted with a rest at the far end or with a second courier, and never as a turnaround.
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 SFO to PEK.
| Connecting at | SFO to hub, flights a day | Hub to PEK, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vancouver YVR | 10.43 | 1.57 | 9,781 | 14h 08m |
| Seoul ICN | 7.71 | 10.29 | 9,988 | 14h 21m |
| Osaka KIX | 1 | 3.71 | 10,455 | 14h 43m |
| Tokyo HND | 3.43 | 9.71 | 10,378 | 14h 54m |
| Tokyo NRT | 1.14 | 1.86 | 10,363 | 14h 54m |
| Los Angeles LAX | 42.71 | 1.14 | 10,580 | 15h 23m |
One nonstop a day means one chance a day, so the connections below are what a consignment that arrives at SFO in the afternoon actually flies on.
38 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Vancouver YVR, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about once a day.
Through YVR the routing covers 9,781 km against the 9,494 km nonstop track and takes about 14h 08m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 75 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 2h 12m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Seoul ICN at 14h 21m and Osaka KIX at 14h 43m 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 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.
If nothing suitable leaves Beijing, Beijing PKX is 65 km away by great circle and carries 159 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 SFO or PEK. Listed as industrial geography, not as customers of anyone.
- Genentech, South San FranciscoBiotechnology research and manufacturing. The original biotech cluster, and still the densest. Logistics through San Francisco SFO.
Plan San Francisco to Beijing 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 SFO to PEK 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 SFO airport entry
- The PEK airport entry
- Hand carry into the United States
- Hand carry into China
- 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 SFO and PEK: Seoul to Beijing, Paris to Beijing, Beijing to Guangzhou, Beijing to Shenzhen, Singapore to Beijing, London to Beijing, Frankfurt to Beijing, Barcelona to Beijing.