The sector is held by United Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
SFO San Francisco to KIX Osaka
San Francisco International, the United States, to Kansai International, Japan. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- About once a day
- Great circle
- 8,692 km
- Block, estimated
- 10h 58m
- Door to door
- 17h 43m
What SFO to KIX looks like
The SFO to KIX sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
San Francisco SFO to Osaka KIX is an ultra long sector of 8,692 km by great circle, flown nonstop about once a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 8,692 km, 880 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 10h 58m.
San Francisco SFO is a major hub in the network held here, 189 scheduled destinations and 656.9 departures a day. Osaka KIX has 70 destinations and 267.1 departures a day.
Osaka runs 17 hours ahead of San Francisco in January and 16 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 KIX from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| SFO to KIX | 1 | 7 | United Airlines |
| KIX to SFO | 1 | 7 | United Airlines |
One carrier holds the sector, United Airlines, so a cancellation has no second nonstop behind it and the connections below stop being theoretical.
Between them the two directions put about 14 departures a week on SFO to KIX, 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 10h 58m block time on SFO to KIX. 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 KIX in the air, estimated | 658 min | 15h 28m |
| Formalities at KIX | 90 min | 16h 58m |
| Delivery run in Osaka | 45 min | 17h 43m |
| Door to door | 1,063 min | 17h 43m |
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 KIX is 17h 43m.
A courier who leaves San Francisco at 09:00 local is on the ground in Osaka at about 12:58 local and at the door by 15:13 the following day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Osaka, 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 17h 43m 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. 25 of them join SFO to KIX.
| Connecting at | SFO to hub, flights a day | Hub to KIX, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tokyo HND | 3.43 | 2 | 8,718 | 12h 52m |
| Tokyo NRT | 1.14 | 5.71 | 8,719 | 12h 53m |
| Vancouver YVR | 10.43 | 0.71 | 9,223 | 13h 27m |
| Seoul ICN | 7.71 | 41.29 | 9,945 | 14h 18m |
| Los Angeles LAX | 42.71 | 1.43 | 9,764 | 14h 24m |
| Honolulu HNL | 6.86 | 2.14 | 10,471 | 14h 37m |
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.
25 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Tokyo HND, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about twice a day.
Through HND the routing covers 8,718 km against the 8,692 km nonstop track and takes about 12h 52m 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 54m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Tokyo NRT at 12h 53m and Vancouver YVR at 13h 27m 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 Osaka, Osaka ITM is 44 km away by great circle and carries 26 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 KIX. 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 Osaka 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 KIX 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 KIX airport entry
- Hand carry into the United States
- Hand carry into Japan
- 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 KIX: Osaka to Seoul, Osaka to Taipei, Osaka to Hong Kong, Osaka to Shanghai, Singapore to Osaka, Osaka to Tokyo, Bangkok to Osaka, Osaka to Beijing.