Airport pair · hand carry reference

STR Stuttgart to CGN Cologne

Stuttgart Airport, Germany, to Cologne Bonn Airport, Germany. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.

Nonstop: 6 times a week
Great circle: 284 km
Block, estimated: 55 min
Door to door: 7h 40m

What STR to CGN looks like

The STR to CGN sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.

Stuttgart STR to Cologne CGN is a short sector of 284 km by great circle, flown nonstop 6 times a week.

The sector is held by EAT Leipzig.

At the cruise speed this site models for 284 km, 720 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 55 min.

Stuttgart STR is a large airport in the network held here, 127 scheduled destinations and 137.3 departures a day. Cologne CGN has 154 destinations and 168.6 departures a day.

Stuttgart and Cologne keep the same clock all year, so the arrival time is the departure time plus the block and nothing else.

The pair sits inside Europe, a corridor where the site already publishes 14 written lanes that go into customs and ground detail this page does not.

Who flies the sector, and how often

Average daily frequencies on STR to CGN from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.

Direction	Flights a day	Flights a week	Operated by
STR to CGN	0.86	6	EAT Leipzig
CGN to STR	0.71	5	EAT Leipzig

One carrier holds the sector, EAT Leipzig, so a cancellation has no second nonstop behind it and the connections below stop being theoretical.

Between them the two directions put about 11 departures a week on STR to CGN, 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 55 min block time on STR to CGN. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.

Stage	Allowed	Elapsed
Collection and the run to STR	90 min	1h 30m
At STR before departure	180 min	4h 30m
STR to CGN in the air, estimated	55 min	5h 25m
Formalities at CGN	90 min	6h 55m
Delivery run in Cologne	45 min	7h 40m
Door to door	460 min	7h 40m

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 STR to CGN is 7h 40m.

A courier who leaves Stuttgart at 09:00 local is on the ground in Cologne at about 09:55 local and at the door by 12:10 the same day.

Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Cologne, the last useful departure from Stuttgart is around 14:50 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. 71 of them join STR to CGN.

Connecting at	STR to hub, flights a day	Hub to CGN, flights a day	Track, km	Estimated, gate to gate
Leipzig LEJ	1.14	1.29	734	3h 05m
Zurich ZRH	2.86	2.14	537	3h 18m
Munich MUC	4.57	6.29	628	3h 26m
Berlin BER	2.86	4.86	975	3h 41m
Paris CDG	0.71	1.43	877	3h 47m
Zagreb ZAG	0.71	0.71	1,483	4h 01m

71 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Leipzig LEJ, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about once a day.

Through LEJ the routing covers 734 km against the 284 km nonstop track and takes about 3h 05m 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 10m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.

Behind it, Zurich ZRH at 3h 18m and Munich MUC at 3h 26m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.

The two ends are only 284 km apart in a straight line. Allowing a road track a quarter longer than that and eighty kilometres an hour, a car covers it in about 4h 26m, so a courier who misses the flight drives rather than connects, and on a short deadline the road is often the plan from the start.

If nothing suitable leaves Stuttgart, Zurich ZRH is 145 km away by great circle and carries 223 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.

If nothing suitable leaves Cologne, Dusseldorf DUS is 54 km away by great circle and carries 176 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.

Restricted hours at either end

Widely documented operating restrictions, checked 2026-09-07. Exemptions and seasonal variations exist, so confirm with the carrier before relying on any of them.

Stuttgart STR is shut to scheduled movements between 23:30 and 06:00 local, so a collection in Stuttgart that runs late does not simply catch a later flight, it waits for the morning and loses a working day in Cologne.

Stuttgart STR, night restrictions: No scheduled movements between 23:30 and 06:00 local.

Industry within reach of the two ends

Public manufacturing and research sites whose logistics run through STR or CGN. Listed as industrial geography, not as customers of anyone.

Mercedes-Benz, Sindelfingen and UntertuerkheimS-Class assembly, powertrain and research. Stuttgart is the densest automotive engineering cluster in Europe. Logistics through Stuttgart STR.
Porsche, ZuffenhausenSports car and engine assembly. Low volume, high value, and intolerant of a missing component. Logistics through Stuttgart STR.
Audi, Ingolstadt and NeckarsulmAssembly, aluminium body construction and engines. Two plants, two airports, one takt. Logistics through Stuttgart STR.
Zeiss SMT, OberkochenOptics for lithography systems. The optics that make lithography possible, made in one place. Logistics through Stuttgart STR.
Ford, Dearborn and CologneAssembly on both sides of the Atlantic. A single engineering organisation split across two continents. Logistics through Cologne CGN.
Bayer, Leverkusen and WuppertalPharmaceutical research and production. The Rhineland cluster, two airports, one region. Logistics through Cologne CGN.

Plan Stuttgart to Cologne 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.

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 STR to CGN 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 STR and CGN: Berlin to Cologne, Manchester to Cologne, Cologne to Derby and Nottingham, Cologne to Prague, Cologne to Lisbon, Cologne to Dusseldorf, Cologne to Stockholm, Cologne to Tel Aviv.

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