Charles de Gaulle International Airport

Charles de Gaulle: the biggest airport in France

Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (IATA CDG, ICAO LFPG), known to the French as Roissy, lies about 25 kilometers northeast of Paris. It is the largest airport in France and the home hub of Air France, and one of the great transfer airports of Europe for Africa, North America, Asia and the Caribbean. For visitors to Paris it is the airport with most of the long-haul and full-service flights; the low-cost carriers are more likely to use Orly or Beauvais. The live radar on this page shows the traffic over Roissy; the arrivals and departures pages are linked above it.

Airlines and destinations

Air France is by far the largest airline and flies from here to the whole world, with West and North Africa, the French Caribbean and North America as particular strengths; KLM and Delta, its SkyTeam partners, are strongly present. easyJet has a large base for European flights. Nearly every major carrier flies to Charles de Gaulle, from British Airways, Lufthansa and American Airlines to Emirates, Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific. In our route data, Frankfurt, London Heathrow, Amsterdam, Toulouse and Nice are the most frequently flown connections, and New York JFK, Montreal, Atlanta and Dubai the busiest long-haul routes.

Getting into Paris

The RER B is the usual way: a suburban train from two stations at the airport (at Terminal 2 and at Terminal 3) to Gare du Nord, Châtelet-Les Halles and Saint-Michel in thirty to forty minutes. The Roissybus runs to the Opéra, and taxis charge a flat fare into Paris, one for the Right Bank and one for the Left; allow 45 minutes to an hour. Under Terminal 2 there is a TGV station with direct high-speed trains to Lille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Nantes, Strasbourg, Marseille and Brussels, which lets you skip Paris altogether. By car, the A1 and A3 lead to the airport.

Good to know

The airport has three terminals. Terminal 1 is the round building with the tubes, Terminal 2 a long row of halls from 2A to 2G where Air France, KLM and most SkyTeam partners are based, and Terminal 3 a simple building for charters and low-cost airlines. The free CDGVAL train links the terminals and the parking lots; between 2E and 2G there is a bus. A transfer within Terminal 2 can mean half an hour of walking, so check the hall on your ticket. Paris has two other airports: Orly to the south and Beauvais far to the north for Ryanair and Wizz Air. Every airport we track is listed in the airport overview.