The epicenter of the chaos has moved in recent days to Australia, with delays and flight cancellations that are sending the airports of Sydney and Melbourne haywire, while the map of the European skies seems to register a slight respite, despite the persistence of chaos and inconvenience (yesterday, for example, British Airways suspended short-haul ticket sales from Heathrow for a week).
June and July put a strain on air travel across Europe, but Italian airports held up better than others. According to the latest data processed by the ENAC (National Civil Aviation Authority), between 20 June and 24 July, 3,600 flights departing from our country’s airports were canceled, with a peak on the day of the strike last 17. July (377 flights canceled). Many, certainly, if you think of the thousands of people involved and the inconvenience suffered, but all in all a small percentage (1.8% of national flights and 3.6% of international ones) compared to those recorded in the main hubs Europeans, especially London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt.
The reasons
The causes of this situation must be sought, as is now known, precisely in the recovery of the sector, higher than expected: the surge in demand, from March onwards, has caught many airlines unprepared and the same airports, without staff, came to miss in the two years of the pandemic. As far as Italian airports are concerned, ENAC data certifies this recovery, which in the first half of this year recorded 16.6 million passengers, a volume four times higher than the same period a year ago (+314 %). We are not yet at the pre-pandemic numbers (the comparison with the first six months of 2019 still records -23.5%, equal to about 21 million fewer passengers), but the trend seems marked and the recovery is important, he explains. the president of Enac Pierluigi Di Palma.
So much so that some airports, in particular those in the South, have even exceeded the levels of 2019: in June Bari recorded an increase in passengers of 20.4% compared to the same month of 2019 and of 16% in the period 1-15 July; Naples by 9.5% and 8.3%; Palermo by 3.4% and 1.2%. Alghero and Olbia in July grew by 10% compared to the same period in 2019. Bergamo (+ 1.5% and + 12.8%) and Bologna (+ 1.4% and + 1.2%) also performed well. .
The desire to fly
«We are facing a summer surge that has determined the situation that we all know, which in any case is moving towards a normalization – explains Di Palma -. Some problematic episodes remain, mainly linked to strikes, but we expect an improvement compared to July, especially in Italian airports ». Beyond the surge in the summer and the related inconveniences, the ENAC president is optimistic: “I have often compared the effects of the pandemic on air transport to those of 11 September – he observes -: then, however, we witnessed a” V “recovery , rapid and immediate, while in this case the recovery is “U” ”.