The airborne lidars ABLE and MALs (up and down) participated in 2002 and 2003 in several ENVISAT validation campaigns performed by the high-altitude research aircraft M-55 "Geophysica". From M-55 ABLE provides vertical profiles of the backscattering ratio at three wavelengths (1064, 532 and 355 nm) and of the aerosol depolarisation ratio at 532 nm. MAL-up and MAL-down are probing respectively upward and downward from M-55. They are single-wavelength (532 nm) elastic backscatter lidars providing backscatter and depolarisation ratios in a short range from the aircraft. The lidars provide the cloud top altitude and, for optically thin clouds, the optical and geometrical depths. During the validation flights, cloud and aerosol layers have been detected under night- and day-time conditions. Hereafter measurements acquired during those campaigns by the ABLE and MAL instruments are presented and compared. With respect to ENVISAT cloud and aerosol products validation, we discuss the possibility to use the combined cloud and aerosol database from the two types of lidars on board M-55.