The sector is held by Arkia Israeli Airlines, Bulgaria Air, El Al, Israir Airlines, Wizz Air and Tus Airways.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
SOF Sofia to TLV Tel Aviv
Sofia Airport, Bulgaria, to Ben Gurion International, Israel. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 3.3 times a day
- Great circle
- 1,559 km
- Block, estimated
- 2h 29m
- Door to door
- 9h 14m
What SOF to TLV looks like
The SOF to TLV sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Sofia SOF to Tel Aviv TLV is a medium haul sector of 1,559 km by great circle, flown nonstop 3.3 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 1,559 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 2h 29m.
Sofia SOF is a large airport in the network held here, 95 scheduled destinations and 107 departures a day. Tel Aviv TLV has 110 destinations and 275.3 departures a day.
Tel Aviv carries about 2.6 times the departures of Sofia, so a courier who has to be rebooked has far more to work with at one end of this pair than at the other.
Sofia and Tel Aviv keep the same clock all year, so the arrival time is the departure time plus the block and nothing else.
The pair sits between Europe and the Middle East, a corridor where the site already publishes 66 written lanes that go into customs and ground detail this page does not.
Who flies the sector, and how often
Average daily frequencies on SOF to TLV from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| SOF to TLV | 3.29 | 23 | Arkia Israeli Airlines, Bulgaria Air, El Al, Israir Airlines, Wizz Air |
| TLV to SOF | 3 | 21 | Arkia Israeli Airlines, Bulgaria Air, El Al, Tus Airways, Wizz Air |
6 carriers are recorded on the sector, so a missed departure is normally a rebooking rather than a lost day.
At 3.3 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 44 departures a week on SOF to TLV, 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 29m block time on SOF to TLV. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to SOF | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At SOF before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| SOF to TLV in the air, estimated | 149 min | 6h 59m |
| Formalities at TLV | 90 min | 8h 29m |
| Delivery run in Tel Aviv | 45 min | 9h 14m |
| Door to door | 554 min | 9h 14m |
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 SOF to TLV is 9h 14m.
A courier who leaves Sofia at 09:00 local is on the ground in Tel Aviv at about 11:29 local and at the door by 13:44 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Tel Aviv, the last useful departure from Sofia is around 13:16 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. 53 of them join SOF to TLV.
| Connecting at | SOF to hub, flights a day | Hub to TLV, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paphos PFO | 0.57 | 8.34 | 1,560 | 4h 04m |
| Larnaca LCA | 0.71 | 17.22 | 1,578 | 4h 05m |
| Bourgas BOJ | 1.14 | 3.86 | 1,678 | 4h 13m |
| Varna VAR | 4.29 | 1.4 | 1,757 | 4h 19m |
| Rhodes RHO | 0.86 | 10.66 | 1,599 | 4h 27m |
| Athens ATH | 1.86 | 16.64 | 1,725 | 4h 33m |
With 3.3 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.
53 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Paphos PFO, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 4 times a week.
Through PFO the routing covers 1,560 km against the 1,559 km nonstop track and takes about 4h 04m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 60 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 1h 35m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Larnaca LCA at 4h 05m and Bourgas BOJ at 4h 13m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves Sofia, Skopje SKP is 168 km away by great circle and carries 53 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
If nothing suitable leaves Tel Aviv, Amman AMM is 109 km away by great circle and carries 72 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Plan Sofia to Tel Aviv 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 SOF to TLV 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 SOF airport entry
- The TLV airport entry
- Hand carry into Bulgaria
- Hand carry into Israel
- The written lane, Tel Aviv to Frankfurt
- The route calculator
More pairs through SOF and TLV: Dubai to Sofia, Eindhoven to Sofia, Cologne to Sofia, Basel to Sofia, Sofia to Leipzig, Birmingham to Sofia, Tel Aviv to Paris, Munich to Tel Aviv.