The sector is held by China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines, Juneyao Airlines, Shanghai Airlines, Shenzhen Airlines and Spring Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
SHA Shanghai to SZX Shenzhen
Hongqiao International, China, to Shenzhen Bao'an, China. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 46.1 times a day
- Great circle
- 1,208 km
- Block, estimated
- 2h 03m
- Door to door
- 8h 48m
What SHA to SZX looks like
The SHA to SZX sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Shanghai SHA to Shenzhen SZX is a medium haul sector of 1,208 km by great circle, flown nonstop 46.1 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 1,208 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 2h 03m.
Shanghai SHA is a mid sized airport in the network held here, 60 scheduled destinations and 423.4 departures a day. Shenzhen SZX has 157 destinations and 574.7 departures a day.
Shanghai and Shenzhen 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 SZX from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| SHA to SZX | 46.14 | 323 | China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines, Juneyao Airlines, Shanghai Airlines, Shenzhen Airlines, Spring Airlines |
| SZX to SHA | 28.3 | 198.1 | China Southern Airlines, Juneyao Airlines, Spring Airlines, Xiamen Airlines, Shanghai Airlines |
7 carriers are recorded on the sector, so a missed departure is normally a rebooking rather than a lost day.
The two directions are not level: SHA to SZX runs 46.1 times a day, the return runs 28.3 times a day, and a round trip has to be planned around the thinner of the two.
At 46.1 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 521.1 departures a week on SHA to SZX, 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 2h 03m block time on SHA to SZX. 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 SZX in the air, estimated | 123 min | 6h 33m |
| Formalities at SZX | 90 min | 8h 03m |
| Delivery run in Shenzhen | 45 min | 8h 48m |
| Door to door | 528 min | 8h 48m |
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 SZX is 8h 48m.
A courier who leaves Shanghai at 09:00 local is on the ground in Shenzhen at about 11:03 local and at the door by 13:18 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Shenzhen, the last useful departure from Shanghai is around 13:42 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. 15 of them join SHA to SZX.
| Connecting at | SHA to hub, flights a day | Hub to SZX, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wuhan WUH | 7.29 | 7.29 | 1,588 | 4h 25m |
| Nanning NNG | 5.57 | 1.14 | 2,194 | 4h 55m |
| Haikou HAK | 3.71 | 14.14 | 2,118 | 5h 03m |
| Sanya SYX | 6.71 | 8.71 | 2,534 | 5h 22m |
| Chongqing CKG | 14.14 | 20.29 | 2,480 | 5h 25m |
| Xian XIY | 19.29 | 21.86 | 2,631 | 5h 36m |
With 46.1 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.
15 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Wuhan WUH, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 7.3 times a day.
Through WUH the routing covers 1,588 km against the 1,208 km nonstop track and takes about 4h 25m 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 22m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Nanning NNG at 4h 55m and Haikou HAK at 5h 03m 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 Shenzhen, Hong Kong HKG is 38 km away by great circle and carries 144 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Plan Shanghai to Shenzhen 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 SHA to SZX 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 SHA airport entry
- The SZX airport entry
- Hand carry into China
- The written lane, Dubai to Shenzhen
- The written lane, Munich to Shenzhen
- The route calculator
More pairs through SHA and SZX: Shanghai to Guangzhou, Shanghai to Beijing, Shanghai to Hong Kong, Shanghai to Tianjin, Xian to Shanghai, Shanghai to Xiamen, Shanghai to Kunming, Shanghai to Chengdu.