The sector is held by TAP Air Portugal.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
SFO San Francisco to LIS Lisbon
San Francisco International, the United States, to Lisbon Humberto Delgado, Portugal. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 4 times a week
- Great circle
- 9,121 km
- Block, estimated
- 11h 29m
- Door to door
- 18h 14m
What SFO to LIS looks like
The SFO to LIS sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
San Francisco SFO to Lisbon LIS is an ultra long sector of 9,121 km by great circle, flown nonstop 4 times a week.
At the cruise speed this site models for 9,121 km, 880 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 11h 29m.
San Francisco SFO is a major hub in the network held here, 189 scheduled destinations and 656.9 departures a day. Lisbon LIS has 154 destinations and 367.9 departures a day.
Lisbon is 8 hours ahead of San Francisco all year.
The pair sits between the Americas and Europe, a corridor where the site already publishes 36 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 LIS from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| SFO to LIS | 0.57 | 4 | TAP Air Portugal |
| LIS to SFO | 0.57 | 4 | TAP Air Portugal |
One carrier holds the sector, TAP Air Portugal, so a cancellation has no second nonstop behind it and the connections below stop being theoretical.
Between them the two directions put about 8 departures a week on SFO to LIS, 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 29m block time on SFO to LIS. 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 LIS in the air, estimated | 689 min | 15h 59m |
| Formalities at LIS | 90 min | 17h 29m |
| Delivery run in Lisbon | 45 min | 18h 14m |
| Door to door | 1,094 min | 18h 14m |
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 LIS is 18h 14m.
A courier who leaves San Francisco at 09:00 local is on the ground in Lisbon at about 04:29 local and at the door by 06:44 the following day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Lisbon, 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 14m 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. 31 of them join SFO to LIS.
| Connecting at | SFO to hub, flights a day | Hub to LIS, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Montreal YUL | 3.43 | 2.86 | 9,311 | 13h 28m |
| Toronto YYZ | 8.57 | 4 | 9,368 | 13h 32m |
| Boston BOS | 18 | 3.43 | 9,465 | 13h 39m |
| Philadelphia PHL | 7 | 1.14 | 9,599 | 13h 49m |
| Newark EWR | 13.43 | 3.71 | 9,551 | 14h 01m |
| New York JFK | 23.43 | 2.14 | 9,556 | 14h 01m |
31 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Montreal YUL, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about twice a day.
Through YUL the routing covers 9,311 km against the 9,121 km nonstop track and takes about 13h 28m 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 59m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Toronto YYZ at 13h 32m and Boston BOS at 13h 39m 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 Lisbon, Faro FAO is 222 km away by great circle and carries 87 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 LIS. 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 Lisbon 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 LIS 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 LIS airport entry
- Hand carry into the United States
- Hand carry into Portugal
- 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 LIS: Madrid to Lisbon, Barcelona to Lisbon, London to Lisbon, Lisbon to Amsterdam, Frankfurt to Lisbon, Paris to Lisbon, Boston to Lisbon, Zurich to Lisbon.