JNB departure terminals
Specific check: JNB: Terminal A is international; Terminal B is domestic. Check the departure area on your booking before arranging your airport drop-off. Official source.
Checked 23 October 2026. O.R. Tambo terminal layout only; flight fares and schedules not reviewed.
Flights Johannesburg -> Nairobi (JNB-NBO) — USD Fares, Airlines, Frequency
35 scheduled departures a week link Johannesburg (JNB) in South Africa with Nairobi (NBO) — about 5 a day — flown by 3 catalogued carriers at a scheduled block time near 4.0 hours.
Johannesburg to Nairobi connects South Africa with Kenya, the main economic centres at the southern and eastern ends of the continent, with around 35 flights a week — five a day. The route carries business travellers, traders, tourists and connecting passengers. Block time is about four hours.
Great-circle distance Johannesburg–Nairobi is about 2,912 km, computed from the stored coordinates of JNB (-26.13, 28.24) and NBO (-1.32, 36.93). What the figure fixes is the sector profile — 2,912 km against a scheduled 4.0-hour block time — and the fuel-and-crew economics behind the fare floor. It does not fix a compensation amount. No fixed-tariff compensation scheme reaches JNB–NBO. EU261 and UK261 do band by distance, but they only cover flights departing an EU/EEA or UK airport — plus arrivals there on a bloc-licensed carrier — and neither endpoint here is one, whoever operates the flight. The Montreal Convention 1999 is what applies, and it pays provable loss, not a tariff.
Airlines on this route
3 carriers operate JNB–NBO: Kenya Airways (KQ), South African Airways (SA) and Ethiopian Airlines (ET). Our carrier table records checked-baggage baselines of 23 kg; the group spans SkyTeam and Star Alliance. That mix decides three things — the fare floor, whether your bag is through-checked on a connection, and which delay regulation covers you.
Three carriers fly JNB-NBO: Kenya Airways, South African Airways and Ethiopian Airlines, all full-service with a checked baggage allowance and meals included. The combination of three carriers gives the route a wide spread of departure times and competitive pricing.
| Carrier | Baggage baseline | Alliance |
|---|---|---|
| Kenya Airways (KQ) | 23 kg | SkyTeam |
| South African Airways (SA) | 23 kg | Star Alliance |
| Ethiopian Airlines (ET) | 23 kg | Star Alliance |
The JNB–NBO carriers do not share one alliance — SkyTeam and Star Alliance are represented — and that has a concrete consequence. Mileage earning and lounge access do not carry across the split, and more importantly a connection built across two of these airlines is only through-checked when the two tickets are issued as one. Two separate confirmations mean you collect the bag, clear immigration where required, and check in again — and a missed second flight is your cost, not the airline’s.
USD fares — JNB-NBO
$390 was the 2026-W29 reading in our weekly fare log for JNB–NBO, across 6 readings that range $273 to $439.
JNB-NBO fares rise around the December holidays. With three carriers competing, the route is well supplied and competitively priced — three to six weeks of lead time usually secures a reasonable economy fare in USD.
Book 4-8 weeks ahead. Fares rise around the December holidays; mid-week departures are usually the cheapest. That window is general guidance rather than a rule for this single pairing; on a corridor with 35 weekly departures, the practical constraint is often seat availability on the days you can actually travel, not the headline fare.
One thing our fare data cannot tell you: whether the quote includes a checked bag. The cache stores a price and a carrier, not a fare family. On JNB–NBO that matters most where a low-cost carrier or a basic-economy bucket is in the mix, because the cheapest screen number and the cheapest all-in number are then two different itineraries. Compare after adding the bag you will actually carry.
What 6 weeks of cached fares show on JNB–NBO
6 weekly readings between 2026-W20 and 2026-W29 put the cached JNB–NBO low between $273 and $439 — a $166 spread, 61% of the cheapest reading. The low landed in 2026-W25; the last reading in this table, 2026-W29, was $390. Each row is one weekly snapshot of the cheapest published quote, not an average of everything sold that week.
| ISO week | Cached low (USD) | Carrier on the quote |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-W20 | $348 | DT |
| 2026-W23 | $439 | TC |
| 2026-W24 | $411 | TC |
| 2026-W25 | $273 | — |
| 2026-W27 | $428 | TC |
| 2026-W29 | $390 | DT |
The cached low rose 12% between the first and last reading, from $348 to $390. Read it with the sample size in front of you: 6 observations over a ten-week window is a signal about this corridor’s volatility, not a forecast. What it does establish is a defensible floor — you now know $273 was achievable on JNB–NBO inside the window, so a quote well above $439 is worth a second search.
Each row is a single weekly snapshot of the cheapest published quote, taken on one day, not an average of everything sold that week. Two consequences follow. A one-week dip can be a single small fare bucket rather than a trend, and a gap between weeks means we did not sample, not that fares vanished.
Visa and entry for Kenya
Entry rule for Kenya, by passport: No eTA needed for most African nationals: East African Partner States (Burundi, DR Congo, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda) up to 180 days; South Africa, Ghana, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Mauritius and others up to 90 days; Nigeria, Egypt, Morocco, Senegal, Angola and others up to 60 days. Nationalities not on these lists need an eTA. Fee No eTA fee for exempt nationalities; check the eTA portal for others; maximum stay 180, 90 or 60 days depending on nationality (see the official list). That row names the passports it covers; for any other passport, check the linked government portal before booking.
| Entry type | Fee | Maximum stay | Official source |
|---|---|---|---|
| No eTA needed for most African nationals: East African Partner States (Burundi, DR Congo, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda) up to 180 days; South Africa, Ghana, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Mauritius and others up to 90 days; Nigeria, Egypt, Morocco, Senegal, Angola and others up to 60 days. Nationalities not on these lists need an eTA | No eTA fee for exempt nationalities; check the eTA portal for others | 180, 90 or 60 days depending on nationality (see the official list) | Kenya official source |
Worth knowing before you book: Exemption lists published on Kenya’s official eTA portal.
Read the row above against your own passport. It names the nationalities it covers, and an ECOWAS, EAC or Maghreb passport not named there can face a different fee, a different processing route or no eligibility at all for the same destination. Entry rules change without notice, so the linked government portal is the authority, not this table.
Search live fares
35 weekly departures across 3 carriers mean a live JNB–NBO search returns several price points for the same day; our weekly fare log has recorded readings as low as $390 (see the dated history on this page). Scheduled nonstop block time is 4.0 hours, so any result far above that is connecting whatever the screen says.
Search JNB -> NBO on Aviasales ->
Three checks make a live JNB–NBO result comparable. Fix the passenger count and cabin first, because a per-passenger fare and a party total look identical on a results page. Then read the elapsed time next to the price — a one-stop itinerary and the 4.0-hour nonstop are different products at the same number. Then check whether the fare carries the bag you are actually taking.
If anything about your JNB–NBO trip can move, make it the dates. The gap between the cheapest and dearest departure month in our own fare log is routinely larger than any difference between one booking site and another. Fixed dates put you in competition with everyone else holding the same date, and the answer there is to book early rather than to keep looking.
About Nairobi
6 catalogued corridors in this site’s data reach Nairobi (NBO), Jomo Kenyatta International, ICAO HKJK, from 6 catalogued origins and 5 carriers in total. That count is this site’s coverage of Nairobi, not the airport’s published schedule. Each of those corridors has its own guide with carriers, weekly frequency, scheduled block time and whatever the fare cache holds.
Nairobi is the capital of Kenya and one of the main economic and transport centres of East Africa. For travellers from Johannesburg it is a business and trade destination and a major hub for onward connections across the continent.
Beyond JNB, our catalogue reaches Nairobi from 5 other origins: Cairo (CAI), Dar es Salaam (DAR), Entebbe (EBB), Kigali (KGL) and Lagos (LOS). That matters when the JNB–NBO fare is unattractive: on a continent where positioning flights are cheap, flying out of a different gateway is a real option, and each of those corridors has its own guide, carriers and cached fare floor on this site.
Nairobi is a based hub for Kenya Airways. A hub airport behaves differently from an outstation: connecting banks are built around it, spare aircraft and crew sit there, and a disruption is far more likely to be recovered the same day. It also means the hub carrier usually sets the price on routes into NBO, and competitors price against it rather than the other way round.
FAQ
Which airlines fly Johannesburg to Nairobi? Direct JNB-NBO flights are operated by Kenya Airways, South African Airways, Ethiopian Airlines. Compare baggage baseline and alliance in the carrier table above.
How long is the JNB-NBO flight and how often does it run? Block time is about 4.0 hours. The JNB-NBO route runs roughly 35 flights per week across all carriers.
How much does a JNB-NBO flight cost and when is it cheapest? Our rough planning range is $400-900 USD (an editorial estimate, not an observed fare); the fare observation on this page shows what our weekly snapshot recorded and when. Intra-Africa and Gulf-hub transit fares move week-to-week; 4-8 weeks is the typical sweet spot.
What is the checked baggage allowance on JNB-NBO? It varies by carrier and fare class — see the baggage-baseline column in the carrier table above. Full-service carriers usually include 23-30 kg, while low-cost carriers sell it as an add-on. Confirm on the airline’s site before booking.
What currency is used in Nairobi? Nairobi uses USD. Fares in this guide are quoted in USD; budget on-the-ground spending in USD.
Related routes and reading
- Johannesburg airport (JNB) — O.R. Tambo International, South Africa: 39 catalogued departure corridors and 6 arrival corridors.
- Nairobi airport (NBO) — Jomo Kenyatta International, Kenya: 19 catalogued departure corridors and 6 arrival corridors.
The corridor links are there to be used as alternatives, not as further reading. If the JNB–NBO fare or schedule does not work, a different African gateway to Nairobi is often the better fix — positioning within the continent is cheap relative to the long-haul sector, and the fare gap between two origins to the same destination is regularly wider than the positioning ticket. The catch is that separately issued sectors carry no protection if the first one runs late.