The sector is held by China Southern Airlines, China United Airlines and Shanghai Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
SHA Shanghai to PKX Beijing
Hongqiao International, China, to Daxing International, China. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 6.9 times a day
- Great circle
- 1,026 km
- Block, estimated
- 1h 49m
- Door to door
- 8h 34m
What SHA to PKX looks like
The SHA to PKX sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Shanghai SHA to Beijing PKX is a short sector of 1,026 km by great circle, flown nonstop 6.9 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 1,026 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 1h 49m.
Shanghai SHA is a mid sized airport in the network held here, 60 scheduled destinations and 423.4 departures a day. Beijing PKX has 159 destinations and 553.7 departures a day.
Shanghai and Beijing keep the same clock all year, so the arrival time is the departure time plus the block and nothing else.
The pair sits inside 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 SHA to PKX from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| SHA to PKX | 6.86 | 48 | China Southern Airlines, China United Airlines, Shanghai Airlines |
| PKX to SHA | 6.71 | 47 | China Southern Airlines, China United Airlines, Shanghai Airlines |
3 carriers are recorded on the sector, so a missed departure is normally a rebooking rather than a lost day.
At 6.9 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 95 departures a week on SHA to PKX, 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 1h 49m block time on SHA to PKX. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to SHA | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At SHA before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| SHA to PKX in the air, estimated | 109 min | 6h 19m |
| Formalities at PKX | 90 min | 7h 49m |
| Delivery run in Beijing | 45 min | 8h 34m |
| Door to door | 514 min | 8h 34m |
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 SHA to PKX is 8h 34m.
A courier who leaves Shanghai at 09:00 local is on the ground in Beijing at about 10:49 local and at the door by 13:04 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Beijing, the last useful departure from Shanghai is around 13:56 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. 19 of them join SHA to PKX.
| Connecting at | SHA to hub, flights a day | Hub to PKX, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seoul GMP | 4.57 | 1.14 | 1,794 | 4h 17m |
| Wuhan WUH | 7.29 | 11.86 | 1,672 | 4h 31m |
| Fuzhou FOC | 6.29 | 9.29 | 2,147 | 4h 52m |
| Xian XIY | 19.29 | 18.29 | 2,111 | 4h 57m |
| Changsha CSX | 8.14 | 18.62 | 2,145 | 4h 59m |
| Xiamen XMN | 21.86 | 13.14 | 2,476 | 5h 10m |
With 6.9 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.
19 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Seoul GMP, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about once a day.
Through GMP the routing covers 1,794 km against the 1,026 km nonstop track and takes about 4h 17m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 60 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 2h 28m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Wuhan WUH at 4h 31m and Fuzhou FOC at 4h 52m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves Shanghai, Shanghai PVG is 45 km away by great circle and carries 206 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
If nothing suitable leaves Beijing, Beijing PEK is 65 km away by great circle and carries 201 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Plan Shanghai 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.
min
min
min
min
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 SHA to PKX 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.
More pairs through SHA and PKX: Guangzhou to Beijing, Shenzhen to Beijing, Shanghai to Beijing, Beijing to Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi to Beijing, Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, Beijing to Ho Chi Minh City, Beijing to Riyadh.