The sector is held by SF Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
SZX Shenzhen to MAA Chennai
Shenzhen Bao'an, China, to Chennai International, India. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 2 times a week
- Great circle
- 3,709 km
- Block, estimated
- 4h 58m
- Door to door
- 11h 43m
What SZX to MAA looks like
The SZX to MAA sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Shenzhen SZX to Chennai MAA is a long haul sector of 3,709 km by great circle, flown nonstop 2 times a week.
At the cruise speed this site models for 3,709 km, 880 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 4h 58m.
Shenzhen SZX is a major hub in the network held here, 157 scheduled destinations and 574.7 departures a day. Chennai MAA has 58 destinations and 160.7 departures a day.
Shenzhen carries about 3.6 times the departures of Chennai, so a courier who has to be rebooked has far more to work with at one end of this pair than at the other.
Chennai is 2.5 hours behind of Shenzhen all year.
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 SZX to MAA from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| SZX to MAA | 0.29 | 2 | SF Airlines |
| MAA to SZX | 0 | 0 | none held |
One carrier holds the sector, SF Airlines, so a cancellation has no second nonstop behind it and the connections below stop being theoretical.
The return leg MAA to SZX carries no scheduled nonstop at all, so a courier coming back does it with a connection.
At 2 times a week the nonstop is thin enough that a consignment which misses it waits days rather than hours, which is the case for reading the routings below before promising anything.
Between them the two directions put about 2 departures a week on SZX to MAA, 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 4h 58m block time on SZX to MAA. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to SZX | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At SZX before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| SZX to MAA in the air, estimated | 298 min | 9h 28m |
| Formalities at MAA | 90 min | 10h 58m |
| Delivery run in Chennai | 45 min | 11h 43m |
| Door to door | 703 min | 11h 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 SZX to MAA is 11h 43m.
A courier who leaves Shenzhen at 09:00 local is on the ground in Chennai at about 11:28 local and at the door by 13:43 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Chennai, the last useful departure from Shenzhen is around 13:17 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. 9 of them join SZX to MAA.
| Connecting at | SZX to hub, flights a day | Hub to MAA, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bangkok DMK | 0.86 | 1.14 | 3,909 | 6h 59m |
| Bangkok BKK | 6.29 | 2.14 | 3,927 | 7h 16m |
| Penang PEN | 1.14 | 0.57 | 4,781 | 8h 06m |
| Kuala Lumpur KUL | 10.57 | 5.29 | 5,197 | 8h 53m |
| Singapore SIN | 8.43 | 6 | 5,519 | 9h 18m |
| Abu Dhabi AUH | 0.86 | 7.43 | 8,953 | 13h 15m |
9 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Bangkok DMK, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 6 times a week.
Through DMK the routing covers 3,909 km against the 3,709 km nonstop track and takes about 6h 59m 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 01m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Bangkok BKK at 7h 16m and Penang PEN at 8h 06m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
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 Shenzhen to Chennai 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 SZX to MAA 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 SZX airport entry
- The MAA airport entry
- Hand carry into China
- Hand carry into India
- The written lane, Dubai to Shenzhen
- The written lane, Munich to Shenzhen
- The written lane, Chennai to Stuttgart
- The route calculator
More pairs through SZX and MAA: Abu Dhabi to Chennai, Singapore to Chennai, Chennai to Delhi, Bangalore to Chennai, Mumbai to Chennai, Frankfurt to Chennai, Hyderabad to Chennai, Kuala Lumpur to Chennai.