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Beauvais Airport (BVA) is the third and smallest international airport serving Paris (the other two being Charles de Gaulle and Orly).  You won’t land there if you’re flying from North America (or anywhere outside of Europe or Morocco), but if Paris is a secondary destination and if you plan to travel within Europe, you may very well have to get to and from the town of Beauvais.

The “Paris-Beauvais Airport” is a bit of a misnomer.  Ryanair commissioned the construction of the airport and remains its primary airline.  If you don’t know about Ryanair (and I didn’t before moving to Europe), it is a budget (and I do mean budget) airline based in Dublin that serves most European capitals small airports located at least an hour outside of most European capitals.  (See my post on the airline for more details.)  They name the airports by the nearest destination city and sometimes include the real location, i.e. “Hamburg-Lübeck” (which is neither in Hamburg nor Lübeck) and “London-Gatwick.”

The Paris-Beauvais is, in fact, located in a small town on the outskirts of Beauvais (which is in turn on the outskirts of Paris) called Tillé.  Short of a taxi ride that will cost you well over 100€, there is really only one way of getting to and from BVA: the shuttle bus.

La Navette •  From Paris to BVA •  From BVA to Paris •  Personal Experience

La Navette (The Shuttle Bus)

The navette departs west Paris from a bus depot near the Porte Maillot métro station.  (Click here to download a free métro map.)

The trip between Porte Maillot and BVA takes about an hour and 15 minutes.  The ticket costs 14€ one-way.  Tickets used to be available for advanced purchase online (saving you the trouble of having to stand in a line), but for “technical reasons,”  the web service has been suspended until further notice (as of November 2009).

In the meantime, tickets may be purchased at the bus depot, in the arrival lounge of BVA, or from the vendor outside the airport who will be stationed near the bus, itself.

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From Paris to BVA

If you are traveling from central Paris to BVA, you will want to take métro ligne une (line 1) direction (towards) La Défense.

When you get off the métro at Porte Maillot, you will see an overpass, over it a large shopping center, and across from the shopping center a bus depot.  This is where you will catch the navette.  (There is also a large hotel nearby called Concorde Lafayette, for a point of reference.)

Refer to the bus timetable on the Aéroport Paris Beauvais Tillé website to find out exactly when to catch the navette for your particular flight.  As a general rule, buses leave the depot 3 hours and 15 minutes before the flight depature time, leaving about a 2-hour window upon arrival and the airport.

There will be many buses at the depot, but the ones preparing for departure will have signs in the front window indicating the the flight destination (i.e. -  Glasgow, Madrid, Dublin).  This way, you will know which bus to get on and when.

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From BVA to Paris

Beauvais is a very small airport (as I recall, there are only five or six gates), and there’s only one way to exit.  When you go out the doors, the navette will be waiting to the right.

As mentioned above, you can either buy your bus ticket in the arrival lounge (just before exiting) or once outside, just by the bus.

Buses generally depart the airport about 20 minutes after a flight arrives, giving passengers enough time to collect baggage, buy a ticket, and board.

The bus will deliver you back to the depot at Porte Maillot, and you will be able to see the big M sign for the métro across the road.  From there you can get on ligne une (line 1) direction (towards) Chateau de Vincennes

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Personal Experience

I have to say (and this is my completely biased opinion), I hate the Beauvais Airport.  Part of this stems from my hatred of Ryanair — their lack of organization and customer service –  but despite that fact that it is a very small airport, I have never proceeded through check-in and security quickly.  On the contrary, counters tend to be understaffed, and long lines for security and passport check stretch out the door as employees wander through the crowd calling one flight at a time to come through.

As with most Ryainair flights at most airports, passengers must walk through gate doors, down and outside the airport, across and the tarmac and up steps onto the planes (removing the boarding tunnel is one of their numerous cost-cutting measures).  This seems like a very romantic idea until it starts raining or snowing.

After about a dozen attempts at flying to and from Beauvais to save money, I realized it just wasn’t worth it.  Usually, when taking into account the extra 28€ (total) and the hour and 15 minutes (each way), it’s just not worth it to me.  The price ends up being about the same as a ticket from a closer airport, and I’d rather pay a little more for a shorter journey.

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