Little Italy of the skies: Palma has more passengers than Italy's busiest airport
Palma de Mallorca has more passengers than the busiest Italian airport, Rome Fiumicino. Possible? Yes. Says the ranking [...]
SME
Palma de Mallorca has more passengers than the busiest Italian airport, Rome Fiumicino. Possible? Yes. So says the ranking compiled by Airport Council International, the association that brings together the vast majority of the continent's airports, concerning the busiest month for air travel, August.
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The figure is impressive for two reasons: because, it is true that Palma is one of the most popular destinations of the summer, but it is equally true that Rome is the Eternal City, the one perhaps most coveted by tourists from around the world along with New York and Paris. Also because, With its 4 million 371 thousand passengers recorded in August, Palma's is only the 10th busiest airport in Europe. Last in the top 10.
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Which means that no Italian airport is in that ranking, topped by Istanbul with 7, 6 million passengers, followed by London Heathrow at 7.5 million, Paris Charles De Gaulle at 6.5 million, Amsterdam at 6 million, and Frankfurt at 5.8 million. Completing the ranking are other big airports such as Madrid, Barcelona and London Gatwick, plus the destination-resort of Antalya in Turkey, which saw a whopping 5.7 million passengers in August.
Analyzing the ranking by country, you can see how Spain has as many as three airports in the August top 10, Turkey and Britain two, France, the Netherlands and Germany one. That is, there are the countries that have been able over the decades, but also in recent times as it is with Spain and Turkey, to build a real airline industry. Not shaky companies that are there one day and who knows the next, as is the case with us, where it is the low-cost airlines (Ryanair and easyjet first and foremost) that keep up passenger numbers and move the country. In France, the air transport industry counts for 8% of the national GDP. And in ours?
We have a company here that is rising almost from scratch from the ashes of the defunct Alitalia. It is doing this with some celerity, but the numbers, today, are what they are: Ita Airways has less than 80 planes, against Lufthansa's more than 300, Air France and British Airways' more than two hundred, KLM's 170, Iberia's 130. And against the 120 of the old Alitalia.
All this results, inevitably, in a weakening of traffic volume on Rome Fiumicino, which in pre-Covid years had always been in the top 10 of European airports. Last August, 4.2 million passengers passed through the Roman airport. And the other Italian airports are light years away: Milan Malpensa is at 2.7 million, Bergamo at 1.5 million, Venice at 1.2 million, Bologna and Catania just over a million. Linate at less than 750,000 passengers.
At all 41 Italian airports surveyed by Assoaeroporti, 21.2 million travelers passed through last August. Less than from Istanbul, London and Paris combined.