Two airport entrances that do not connect
This is the quirk almost nobody flags before departure. The airport has an international sector, on the Swiss side, and a French sector. The French sector is reached only by the customs road from Ferney-Voltaire, and the airport states that pedestrians and cyclists cannot use that road.
The separation is real: only passengers holding a valid ticket for the same day, give or take one day, may move between the two sectors, and the crossing cannot be made on foot or by bicycle. Arriving on the wrong side is not fixed by walking two hundred metres. It is fixed by driving round again.
Hence the question we ask when you book, which is not bureaucracy: which side the flight is handled on. The answer decides the routing of the last twenty kilometres.
The drop-off lane is not a waiting area
The airport is explicit about its drop-off lane: it sits at Departures level, a few steps from the terminal, it is open around the clock, it is free, and parking there, even briefly, is not authorised. It is a stop, not a wait.
A pick-up on arrival therefore follows different rules: you enter a paid car park, which means passing under a height limit. The figures the airport publishes are uneven: 2.80 metres at P2, 2.40 metres on level minus three of P26, 2 metres at both P1 and P20, and 1.90 metres at P51.
For a transfer van the conclusion is immediate: P2, or level minus three of P26. The cheapest car park is closed to it. That choice is made before arrival.
The detail few sites mention
Two points we prefer to settle in advance rather than discover on the road. The first is the Swiss motorway vignette: 40 francs, valid from 1 December of the previous year to 31 January of the following year, with no short-term option. Even for a few kilometres of motorway, it is due.
The second is administrative. Geneva law on taxis and chauffeur-driven vehicles requires foreign operators to complete the federal procedure verifying professional qualifications beforehand, and to file a posting notification. A run to Geneva is therefore not simply a long distance job: it is prepared, and preparing it is our work, not yours.