The sector is held by LOT - Polish Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
SFO San Francisco to WAW Warsaw
San Francisco International, the United States, to Warsaw Chopin, Poland. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 5 times a week
- Great circle
- 9,418 km
- Block, estimated
- 11h 51m
- Door to door
- 18h 36m
What SFO to WAW looks like
The SFO to WAW sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
San Francisco SFO to Warsaw WAW is an ultra long sector of 9,418 km by great circle, flown nonstop 5 times a week.
At the cruise speed this site models for 9,418 km, 880 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 11h 51m.
San Francisco SFO is a major hub in the network held here, 189 scheduled destinations and 656.9 departures a day. Warsaw WAW has 165 destinations and 327.5 departures a day.
Warsaw is 9 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 WAW from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| SFO to WAW | 0.71 | 5 | LOT - Polish Airlines |
| WAW to SFO | 0.71 | 5 | LOT - Polish Airlines |
One carrier holds the sector, LOT - Polish Airlines, so a cancellation has no second nonstop behind it and the connections below stop being theoretical.
Between them the two directions put about 9.9 departures a week on SFO to WAW, 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 51m block time on SFO to WAW. 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 WAW in the air, estimated | 711 min | 16h 21m |
| Formalities at WAW | 90 min | 17h 51m |
| Delivery run in Warsaw | 45 min | 18h 36m |
| Door to door | 1,116 min | 18h 36m |
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 WAW is 18h 36m.
A courier who leaves San Francisco at 09:00 local is on the ground in Warsaw at about 05:51 local and at the door by 08:06 the following day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Warsaw, 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 36m 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. 29 of them join SFO to WAW.
| Connecting at | SFO to hub, flights a day | Hub to WAW, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Copenhagen CPH | 1.14 | 7.43 | 9,473 | 13h 51m |
| Amsterdam AMS | 2.29 | 9 | 9,886 | 14h 29m |
| Frankfurt FRA | 4.57 | 7.71 | 10,046 | 14h 40m |
| London LHR | 7.43 | 6.57 | 10,086 | 14h 46m |
| Paris ORY | 0.57 | 1.14 | 10,345 | 14h 49m |
| Los Angeles LAX | 42.71 | 1.14 | 10,201 | 14h 56m |
29 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Copenhagen CPH, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about once a day.
Through CPH the routing covers 9,473 km against the 9,418 km nonstop track and takes about 13h 51m 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 00m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Amsterdam AMS at 14h 29m and Frankfurt FRA at 14h 40m 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 Warsaw, Krakow KRK is 246 km away by great circle and carries 135 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 WAW. 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 Warsaw 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 WAW 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 WAW airport entry
- Hand carry into the United States
- Hand carry into Poland
- 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 WAW: San Francisco to Seattle, San Francisco to Boston, London to San Francisco, Atlanta to San Francisco, Los Angeles to San Francisco, Frankfurt to San Francisco, San Francisco to Chicago, Paris to San Francisco.