Nice Côte d'Azur is France's third airport and the gateway to the whole French Riviera. Its layout is simple on paper — two terminals — but it produces the same mistake every day: travellers waiting for their driver in the wrong building, two kilometres from him. Here is how not to be one of them.
Two terminals, two kilometres
Terminal 2 handles the majority of traffic, notably international flights and the main scheduled carriers. Terminal 1 takes some of the low-cost airlines and certain European routes.
The two are about two kilometres apart, linked by a free shuttle and by tram line 2, which serves both before continuing into central Nice. Allow a quarter of an hour to move from one to the other, longer with luggage and at busy times.
Your terminal is on your ticket and on your airline's information screens. It is the first thing to check, and the only piece of information a driver absolutely needs.
Where to find your driver
The most reliable meeting point is the arrivals hall, after baggage reclaim. The driver waits there with a board bearing your name, and you receive his first name and direct number before you land — which lets you find each other even in a packed hall.
Why not outside the terminal? Because the kerbside drop-off is regulated, time-limited and often gridlocked. A car circling while a passenger is delayed helps nobody. If you would nonetheless prefer to be met outside, that is possible: we agree a precise spot when you book.
One detail that matters: do not leave the arrivals area before you have seen your driver or received his message. The outdoor areas of the two terminals look alike, and searching for each other in two different places costs everyone ten minutes.
Flight tracking, in practice
We track your flight number live. If the aircraft is late, the pick-up time shifts automatically and the wait is not charged. There is nothing for you to do and nothing to report.
That works the other way too: if your flight lands early, the driver is told. Baggage reclaim time, however, remains unpredictable — ten minutes to three quarters of an hour depending on the flight and the time of day. That is why the meeting happens after the belt, and not at a fixed hour.
How long from the airport
Here are journey times in normal conditions, outside rush hour and outside event periods. Distances are by road.
Around Nice
- Saint-Laurent-du-Var: 5 km, 10 minutes — the closest commune to the terminal
- Nice centre: 7 km, 15 minutes
- Cagnes-sur-Mer: 11 km, 15 minutes
- Villefranche-sur-Mer: 14 km, 20 minutes
- Beaulieu-sur-Mer: 17 km, 25 minutes
- Èze: 21 km, 30 minutes
Eastwards
- Cap-d'Ail: 25 km, 30 minutes
- Monaco: 30 km, 30 minutes
- Roquebrune-Cap-Martin: 34 km, 35 minutes
- Menton: 40 km, 40 minutes
Westwards
- Antibes: 21 km, 25 minutes
- Sophia Antipolis: 25 km, 30 minutes
- Cannes: 27 km, 30 minutes
- Grasse: 39 km, 45 minutes
- Saint-Raphaël: 68 km, 55 minutes
- Saint-Tropez: 115 km, 1 hr 30 outside high season
Into the mountains
- Isola 2000: 93 km, 1 hr 30
- Auron: 100 km, 1 hr 45
Two remarks on these figures. Westbound journeys use the A8, which loads in the Nice-to-Cannes direction in the morning and the reverse in the evening: add a quarter of an hour at peak times. And the run to Saint-Tropez is the only one where the seasonal gap is dramatic, the single access road to the gulf saturating in July and August.
The commonest address traps
The French Riviera is full of names that resemble one another and places that have nothing to do with each other. The four confusions we meet most often:
- Èze-Village and Èze-Bord-de-Mer. Four hundred metres of altitude and a quarter of an hour of hairpins separate them. Check your hotel's address.
- Vallauris and Golfe-Juan. Same commune, but three kilometres and a climb apart. Golfe-Juan is on the water, Vallauris on the hill.
- Biot station is down by the sea, four kilometres from the perched village.
- Les Arcs-Draguignan station is at Les Arcs-sur-Argens, twelve kilometres from Draguignan.
Giving the name of the hotel, estate or building as well as the address settles the matter at a stroke.
Leaving home for the airport
This is the direction where a mistake costs most, and the rule is simple: the time is worked back from your check-in deadline, not from the take-off time.
In practice, we start from the hour you must be at the desk or at security, work back the journey time allowing for predictable traffic on your route that day, and add a margin. For a seven o'clock flight from Cagnes-sur-Mer, a pick-up around half past five is enough. From Auron in winter, you need to leave nearly four hours earlier.
You can always ask for extra margin. Nobody has ever regretted arriving early at an airport.
Outsized luggage
Ski bags, golf clubs, diving gear, musical instruments, pushchairs, a wheelchair: tell us when you book. This is not administrative politeness, it decides which vehicle we send.
A saloon takes three suitcases and three cabin bags. Beyond that, or with awkward equipment, it is the seven-seat van. Discovering on the pavement that the boot is not big enough is the worst possible moment to find out.
For a specific transfer to or from Nice Airport, request a quote: you get the firm price, the vehicle and the exact meeting point.