Nice Cote d'Azur Airport

Nice Cote d'Azur Airport began as a grass airstrip on the Var plain, west of the city. The very first flights in the area took off there in 1910. Regular passenger service started between World War One and World War Two. After 1945, the airport grew fast and steadily, because the French Riviera had become one of Europe's top vacation coasts, drawing visitors from across the continent.

The land around Nice left very little room to grow. The sea sat on one side of the airport, and steep hills sat on the other. So engineers built new land instead, pushing fill straight into the Mediterranean Sea to make space for runways. A first terminal opened in 1957, and Terminal 2 followed in 1987 as passenger traffic kept climbing higher each year, especially in summer.

Nice grew into France's third busiest airport, and its top gateway outside Paris. Business travelers head there for Monaco and the nearby Sophia Antipolis technology park, alongside many tourists. The French state sold most of its airport stake to a private group in 2016. Helicopter shuttles link Nice to Monaco in about seven minutes. The airport also has one of Europe's densest clusters of business jet traffic.

Nice has two parallel runways, meaning runways that run side by side in the same direction, both built on reclaimed land. They are named 04L/22R and 04R/22L. The second one is much shorter, and mostly light aircraft and helicopters use it. Terminals 1 and 2 sit along the shoreline and are linked by a tramway that also runs into the city.

Air France and easyJet carry the largest shares of passengers, with easyJet basing aircraft here. Traffic is strongly seasonal, peaking in summer and around the busy Cannes and Monaco event calendar. Business jets and Monaco helicopter shuttles use a separate dedicated terminal. Because the approach crosses the sea with mountains close behind, controllers follow careful noise and terrain rules.