The sector is held by Air France, Iberia, Swiftair, Air Mauritius, American Airlines and China Eastern Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
CDG Paris to MAD Madrid
Charles de Gaulle Airport, France, to Adolfo Suarez Barajas, Spain. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 13.9 times a day
- Great circle
- 1,062 km
- Block, estimated
- 1h 51m
- Door to door
- 8h 36m
What CDG to MAD looks like
The CDG to MAD sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Paris CDG to Madrid MAD is a short sector of 1,062 km by great circle, flown nonstop 13.9 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 1,062 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 1h 51m.
Paris CDG is a major hub in the network held here, 277 scheduled destinations and 771.4 departures a day. Madrid MAD has 252 destinations and 720.9 departures a day.
Paris and Madrid keep the same clock all year, so the arrival time is the departure time plus the block and nothing else.
The pair sits inside Europe, a corridor where the site already publishes 14 written lanes that go into customs and ground detail this page does not.
Who flies the sector, and how often
Average daily frequencies on CDG to MAD from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| CDG to MAD | 13.86 | 97 | Air France, Iberia, Swiftair |
| MAD to CDG | 7.43 | 52 | Air France, Air Mauritius, American Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Swiftair |
7 carriers are recorded on the sector, so a missed departure is normally a rebooking rather than a lost day.
The two directions are not level: CDG to MAD runs 13.9 times a day, the return runs 7.4 times a day, and a round trip has to be planned around the thinner of the two.
At 13.9 times a day there is usually another departure within a few hours, which is what makes a same day booking on this pair realistic.
Between them the two directions put about 149 departures a week on CDG to MAD, which is the number that decides whether a seat can be found today or on Thursday.
The clock from collection to signature
The same ground timings the route calculator starts from, applied to the 1h 51m block time on CDG to MAD. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to CDG | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At CDG before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| CDG to MAD in the air, estimated | 111 min | 6h 21m |
| Formalities at MAD | 90 min | 7h 51m |
| Delivery run in Madrid | 45 min | 8h 36m |
| Door to door | 516 min | 8h 36m |
On the desk standard ground timings, ninety minutes to collect and reach the airport, three hours at the airport before departure, ninety minutes of arrival formalities and a forty five minute delivery run, the door to door figure for CDG to MAD is 8h 36m.
A courier who leaves Paris at 09:00 local is on the ground in Madrid at about 10:51 local and at the door by 13:06 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Madrid, the last useful departure from Paris is around 13:54 local.
When the nonstop does not work
Every airport that joins the two ends, ranked by when they land, among the ones whose weaker leg is dependable enough to plan on. Connection time is allowed for the size of the hub. 138 of them join CDG to MAD.
| Connecting at | CDG to hub, flights a day | Hub to MAD, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bordeaux BOD | 8.43 | 2.43 | 1,062 | 3h 34m |
| Bilbao BIO | 2.71 | 9.14 | 1,078 | 3h 35m |
| Nantes NTE | 5.43 | 1.43 | 1,129 | 3h 40m |
| Toulouse TLS | 13.43 | 3 | 1,142 | 3h 41m |
| Lyon LYS | 6.57 | 4 | 1,324 | 4h 01m |
| Valencia VLC | 3.43 | 6.29 | 1,372 | 4h 03m |
With 13.9 times a day on the nonstop, a connection here is a disruption plan rather than a routing, and it is listed because a closed runway or a cancellation wave is exactly when nobody has time to work it out.
138 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Bordeaux BOD, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about twice a day.
Through BOD the routing covers 1,062 km against the 1,062 km nonstop track and takes about 3h 34m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 60 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 1h 43m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Bilbao BIO at 3h 35m and Nantes NTE at 3h 40m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves Paris, Paris ORY is 35 km away by great circle and carries 157 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Restricted hours at either end
Widely documented operating restrictions, checked 2026-09-07. Exemptions and seasonal variations exist, so confirm with the carrier before relying on any of them.
Paris CDG is shut to scheduled movements between 00:00 and 05:00 local, so a collection in Paris that runs late does not simply catch a later flight, it waits for the morning and loses a working day in Madrid.
Paris CDG, night restrictions: Scheduled movements between midnight and 05:00 local are limited to a fixed annual number of slots.
Madrid MAD, night operations: Operates around the clock. Night departures to the Americas are routine.
Industry within reach of the two ends
Public manufacturing and research sites whose logistics run through CDG or MAD. Listed as industrial geography, not as customers of anyone.
- Safran, Villaroche and CorbeilEngine assembly and test for the CFM programmes. The most produced engine family in the world generates the most spare movements. Logistics through Paris CDG.
- Renault, Flins and DouaiAssembly and electric vehicle production. Paris is both the plant region and the intercontinental gate. Logistics through Paris CDG.
- Sanofi, Frankfurt Hoechst and ParisInsulin production and research. One company, two countries, one supply chain. Logistics through Paris CDG.
- Airbus, Getafe and IllescasRear fuselage, tail sections and composite structures. The Spanish sites sit on the same takt as the French and German ones. Logistics through Madrid MAD.
Plan Paris to Madrid yourself
The same tool the dispatchers use, open to anybody and free. It is loaded with this pair already. Change either end, add a stopover or a preferred airline, and it works out the connection, the transit and the door to door clock, with the real departures underneath. Put it on your own site if it is useful to you.
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Restrictions
Where this came from, and where to look next
- Carriers and frequencies: AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics, retrieved 2026-09-07. Average daily flights, not a timetable.
- Distances: great circle from published coordinates. They read short against a flown track, which is why the block time above applies a factor to them.
- Block and connection times: the same model the route calculator lower down this page runs, at the same rounding.
- Restrictions: the airport notes file, checked 2026-09-07.
- Industrial sites: public company information. Nothing here says or implies that any company named is a customer of any courier operator.
Who publishes this. OnBoard Courier is a placement desk in Dubai. An assignment is carried out by a vetted partner operator, with the desk as the single point of contact from the quote to the signature. This page exists because our own dispatchers need the answer for CDG to MAD in the twenty minutes before a promise is made, and a reference only one operator can read is not a reference. Free to read, quote and cite. Found an error? Tell us and we will correct it.
If you need something moved rather than looked up, the desk prices a hand carry in fifteen minutes.
- The CDG airport entry
- The MAD airport entry
- Hand carry into France
- Hand carry into Spain
- The written lane, Abu Dhabi to Paris
- The written lane, Doha to Paris
- The written lane, Dubai to Paris
- The route calculator
More pairs through CDG and MAD: Paris to Frankfurt, London to Paris, Amsterdam to Paris, Paris to Barcelona, Paris to Atlanta, Munich to Paris, Paris to Copenhagen, Singapore to Paris.