Brescia Airport Loses Domestic Flights, Passengers Seek Alternatives
Brescia-Montichiari Airport, stops domestic flights. Starting Sunday, March 25th, the Montichiari-Rome Fiumicino route will be removed from the schedule: the airline Air Dolomiti will guarantee two daily flights only until Saturday. After that, it’s the end.
The candidate for replacement, the airline Gold Wing, appears to be out of the running. It is therefore pointless to call the Brescia airline’s toll-free number to book a flight to the capital starting from Sunday, March 25th.
Essentially, travelers will need to refer to Verona-Villafranca Airport, and use the airline Meridiana, which offers several routes to Rome. The plan to consolidate passenger flow from Brescia’s airport is thus collapsing, at least for now, and the many promises of development are evaporating like soap bubbles.
Flight Trends and Future Outlook
In 2000, daily flights to Rome ensured over 40,000 passengers for «D’Annunzio», about 25% of total traffic, which reached nearly 165,000 passengers, mostly on flights to London with Ryanair (aside from a few sporadic charters).
In short, from March 25th, «D’Annunzio» will become just a hub for Ryanair flights to London, and on that very day, the Bottega dei Viaggi, which since January had been operating six biweekly charter flights to the sunny beaches of Tunisia, also risks closing in Brescia.
The problem is that starting April 8th, flights to Tunisia will be scheduled after midnight and, unless Catullo spa, which manages «D’Annunzio», issues a contrary order, the Brescia airport will be closed at that time.
For both Tunisia and Rome, the departure airport will therefore be Verona. Brescia residents remain certain that from next Sunday, the projections for passenger numbers in 2001 will suddenly decline by 30%.
How will Catullo compensate for this loss and fulfill its promise to reach 300,000 passengers this year, considered the minimum development goal for «D’Annunzio»? It is the question that everyone is asking, beginning with the Province and the Brescia Chamber of Commerce, who have long awaited a meeting to establish the new management company.
The provincial Transport Councilor, Vigilio Bettinsoli, is annoyed: “It’s time to put an end to this,” he says firmly. “I call on all Brescia’s industrial and financial forces to give this matter a new direction. Promises, words, delays — after two years, we are still at a standstill.” This is in a province that exports goods equal in value to the entire economic movement of a country like Greece.
The fourth largest industrial city in Italy has an airport, considered by the Regional Lombardia Research Institute to be one of the best in Europe for development potential, yet it remains below cities like Rimini, Treviso, Ancona, Brindisi.
The mayor of Montichiari, Gianantonio Rosa, who with his Administration was ready to acquire shares to join the new management company, also expressed concern: “The real issue is the airport concession from Rome,” Rosa observes. “Everything will be more difficult until a system is found to assign the concession to a Brescia-based company, made up of entrepreneurs who would still sign their agreement today.”
Yesterday, it was impossible to get a comment from «Catullo», which postponed any announcements to today. It therefore seems unlikely that the Brescia financial elite will step forward before knowing where the concession will land.
Will it return to Verona or will it be put up for auction? Everything depends on the bargaining power of the parties, but with the Parliament dissolved, all seems postponed until after the May 13 elections.
Meanwhile, at «D’Annunzio», concerns are palpable: over 100 people work inside, including firefighters, air traffic controllers, and staff of the few offices still open in the modern structure, which was inaugurated almost miraculously on March 15 two years ago.
