Cannes Film Festival Provides Hefty Bizav Boost

With the 71st Cannes Film Festival underway in France, Air Charter Service (ACS) looked to quantify how much of an increase in traffic the event—held this year from May 8 to 19—brings to the local airport.

“We analyzed the WingX data for Cannes-Mandelieu Airport for last May to see just how much of a boost the airport gets during and directly after the star-studded festival,” said Andy Christie, the company’s global director for executive jets, adding that the airport typically ranks among the top-five summer destinations among ACS’ clients. “Looking at the data for the day that the festival finished and the day after, we saw that they were the two busiest days for private aircraft movements for the whole year, 37 percent higher than the next most popular day in the height of summer."

Based on the analysis, Christie noted that given the airport’s operating hours (6 a.m. until half an hour after sunset), private jets were departing the airport on those days at the rate of one every 15 minutes.

“Another interesting thing we noticed is that the percentage of flights on larger jets drastically increases,” said Christie. “Compared with the year’s overall average, ultra-long-range jets’ usage increases three-fold on those last two days of the festival, on aircraft such as Gulfstreams and Bombardier’s Global range.”

The long legs of those aircraft were not tested, as fewer than 5 percent of the departures on those days involved trips of more than three hours, with London Luton proving to be the most popular destination.