Cannes to Paris is 695 km north and about 1 h 17 in the air, Cannes Mandelieu to Paris Le Bourget, on a light jet. Nothing on the sector crosses a border. Indicative price from €5 800 for the whole aircraft, one way, as our own floor – and on a flight this short it is the two-hour minimum rather than the flying that sets it. Of the two fields on this stretch of coast Mandelieu is the smaller, and it will only take business jets up to a certain size – so the party and the bags want naming before the aeroplane does. Written quotation inside 30 minutes; +357 95 119759 answers at any hour.
Off the Croisette and into the Paris airport that has no scheduled traffic at all, in an hour and a quarter. On this route the distance decides almost nothing and the field you leave from decides almost everything. Arranged 24/7.
REQUEST A QUOTENothing about the flight itself is difficult. Both ends are French, so no border is crossed and no formality has to be sat through; 695 km is a distance every light jet on our list treats as routine. The difficulty, such as it is, belongs to the departure field. Mandelieu lies 24 km west of Nice, it is the smaller of the two, and there is a ceiling on the size of business jet it will accept – which reverses the usual order of things, because the runway narrows the choice of aeroplane before the number of passengers does. Then there is the calendar. Across the summer, and above all in the May fortnight when the film festival and the Monaco Grand Prix land almost on top of each other, the scarce commodity on this coast is the slot and the people to handle it, not the aircraft – and at the end of those weeks everyone wants to leave at once.
The arrival is not a decision – Le Bourget is where Paris business aviation lands. The departure is the whole of the decision on this route, and unusually it is a decision about the aeroplane as much as about the address you are leaving.
| Airport | Codes | Great-circle | Suits you if |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cannes Mandelieu | CEQ / LFMD | 695 km | The field this page measures from, and the one that sits nearest the Croisette: it picks you up 24 km closer in than Nice would, in the season when 24 km of coast road is worth the most. Against that, it is a small airport with a ceiling on the size of business jet it will take. Give us the numbers, the bags and the dates and you will get a straight answer on whether it works, before anything is committed. |
| Nice Cote d’Azur | NCE / LFMN | the alternative | Where the trip goes when the group or the aeroplane outgrows Mandelieu – and the better choice anyway if the last night is east of Cannes. Treat it as a separate airport rather than a second entrance to the same one: its business terminal is held apart from the scheduled halls, and the Monaco helicopter puts down on the field itself. Neither the distance nor the time on this page is calculated from here. |
| Paris Le Bourget | LBG / LFPB | arrival | The end of the sector. There is no scheduled traffic here whatsoever – business aviation is all it does – and of the Paris airports it lies nearest the centre. Several handling agents compete for the work, which is the real reason you are off the ramp and into a car so quickly. One week a year is different: during the Paris Air Show the constraint becomes Le Bourget’s own apron rather than anything in the sky. |
Airport coordinates and codes: OurAirports open dataset, retrieved 23 August 2026. Distance calculated great-circle between Cannes Mandelieu and Le Bourget.
Range simply does not come up at 695 km, and over seventy-seven minutes the size of the cabin is a matter of taste rather than necessity. The field is not a matter of taste. Mandelieu caps the size of business jet it accepts, which is why the three below are all light types – that is the runway talking, not us.
The type that flies this run most often, and normally our first suggestion for a group coming home from a stay rather than a meeting: of the three light jets listed it swallows the most luggage, and it is usually the quickest to secure at short notice.
Embraer Phenom 300 ›The right call for a few people without much luggage. Across seventy-seven minutes a wider cabin buys you seventy-seven minutes of extra room; what it costs shows up on an invoice that outlives the flight considerably.
Cessna Citation CJ2+ ›Quiet and unhurried, and a good fit for the shape of trip this page describes – several days on the coast with proper luggage rather than a turn-round the same evening.
Citation Bravo ›All three types are on our own fleet pages. A larger party or a bigger cabin flies the same sector out of Nice instead – give us the group and the luggage and we will say which of the two fields the trip actually fits.
From €5 800 one way for the whole aircraft. Our own floor, not a quotation, and on a seventy-seven minute sector the way it is built is the point.
No published price for this city pair has reached us from a source we would be willing to reprint, so instead of borrowing one we show the arithmetic: two hours charged, because a two-hour minimum applies and the flying is only an hour and a quarter of it, at the published starting rate of €2 900 an hour for the cabin class (Eurosky, 19.02.2026), rounded down. The same floor stands on the Paris-to-Cannes page, because a minimum and a class rate do not care which way the aeroplane is pointing.
Take any of the hourly figures below, multiply by seventy-seven minutes, and you will not have arrived at a price. Time in the air is the lesser half of what a short sector costs. Sitting on top of it are the crew’s whole day, a landing fee and handling at each end, and, in season, a parking bill. Parking is the item to put to us directly. An aeroplane that was able to remain on the coast prices one way; an aeroplane that had to come and fetch you and then go home again prices another, and both of those extra sectors belong to you. Over a flight of this length they are not a rounding error – they can be a third of the total – which is why they belong in the quotation you read beforehand and not in the invoice afterwards.
The other question worth putting is what happens to be heading your way already. Few corridors in Europe shed as many repositioning flights as this one does, and buying one means accepting the operator’s day and something close to the operator’s hour in return for the saving. As yardsticks, other people publish €4 600 to €7 300 an hour for light jets in Europe, a floor of €2 900 an hour quoted in February 2026, and a band of $3 750 to $4 200 an hour in August 2026.
GET A FIRM PRICEEvery figure above other than our own floor is a third-party published hourly rate for the aircraft class, not a price for this route, shown so that you can check any quotation you receive, ours included. Only a written quotation from Diamond Executive Aero Services, against your dates, is a price. Call +357 95 119759, 24/7.
No market in European business aviation swings harder with the season than this coast, and on this pairing which week you pick tells you far more than how far you are going. The same 695 km flown north in February and flown north in the second week of August are not the same purchase at all.
| Period | What happens | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| May | A shoulder month by the calendar and the worst fortnight of the year by experience. The film festival and the Grand Prix sit almost on top of one another, and when they break up this end of the sector produces a burst of departures compressed into a day or two. | Ask early, and settle the field in the same conversation. Aeroplanes are not what runs out – slots and coastal handling are, and Mandelieu is small. In that fortnight the airport is the opening question rather than the closing one. |
| June to September | Peak Mediterranean. Rationing starts with the slot and the handling agent long before it reaches the aeroplane, and the Sunday evening northbound is this route’s bottleneck in the way the Friday afternoon southbound is the other page’s. | Name the hour, not merely the day, so the handling window can be held against it before you commit to anything. Over a summer weekend a few weeks of notice buys you that window – the aeroplane was never the hard part. |
| October | The second shoulder, and the coast drains about as fast as it filled. The fleet starts drifting back north for the winter – which happens to be exactly where you are going. | Good prices and easy availability arrive together. If there is one month in the year to ask what is repositioning northwards, it is this one, and short notice is realistic throughout it. |
| November to April | The coast is quiet, but the fleet is not idle: aeroplanes shuttle between Paris, Nice and Geneva all winter, so something appropriate is generally in motion. | Late booking works. Where your dates have any give in them, put the empty-leg question first and price a full charter afterwards. |
Seasonality reflects the demand pattern on this corridor: a Mediterranean summer peak from June to September, with May and October as the shoulder months.
For a fair number of parties Le Bourget is a change of aeroplane rather than the end of the trip, and the second sector is cheaper quoted with this one than booked after it.
380 km and about 54 minutes across the Channel, the shortest sector we publish out of Le Bourget and the commonest continuation of all.
Paris to London ›409 km and about 56 minutes into the Alps, and the usual shape whenever the coast and the mountains are two halves of the same month.
Paris to Geneva ›2,987 km and about 4 h 11 east on a super-midsize cabin, into the island where our own operations desk sits, staffed around the clock.
Paris to Larnaca ›Tell us your dates and how many of you there are. Your dedicated flight advisor will come back with aircraft options and a firm price.
All published routes are listed on the route index. Also useful: the fleet, current empty legs, jet sharing.