Paris to Figari

This is the Paris summer migration in its purest form: villas and yachts around Bonifacio and Porto-Vecchio, July and August weekends, out on Friday and back at the end of the month. Le Bourget, Europe’s established business aviation gateway to Paris, handles the departure without airline queues; the craft on this sector is all at the Corsican end.

In season Figari is slot-coordinated through COHOR, France’s slot coordinator, and the coordination applies to private flights as well as airlines. Parking is a separate prior permission, requested at least 24 hours ahead, and in peak summer roughly an hour on the ground is typically the most that is approved. There is effectively no overnight parking. So we plan a drop-and-go: the aircraft lands, you step off, and it repositions — usually to Ajaccio or the mainland — then returns for the pickup leg. It sounds elaborate; arranged properly, you never notice it.

The slot, the parking permission and the handling have to hold together as one package, which is why late schedule changes at Figari carry real cost: move the time and you risk losing both the slot and the stand. We ask for fixed dates where possible and about a week’s notice for peak weekends.

The field itself is capable — a 2,480-metre runway that takes super-midsize and most heavy jets — but it is a single runway with no parallel taxiway, so aircraft backtrack after landing and traffic flows slowly at peak. Local crews also know the wind: strong westerlies accelerate through the mountain passes and can make summer-afternoon finals bumpy. Neither changes the plan; both are why the timing margins we build in are not padding.

Outside the summer coordination window Figari is a quiet regional field and the route can often be arranged at short notice.