Aeroitalia, Italy’s latest private airline venture, is continuing its ambitious expansion plans. Days after launching its base in Bergamo, the airline’s executive vice-president of operations, Ugo Calvosa, announced that Florence, the capital of Tuscany, will receive the company’s next base.
The information was first published by Italian website Travel Quotidiano, in an interview published this Tuesday.
Calvosa mentioned “already from December” the operating base in Florence will be up and running, “where [we] will base a Boeing 737-700 and eventually the second ATR 72 in [wet] leasing”.
Currently, the airline operates a fleet of three 737-800s, with a further two expected to join its fleet, according to Planespotters.net. The airline also wet leases an ATR 72-600 from Romanian airline Air Connect.
Aeroitalia’s strategy seems to work on a trial-and-error basis, with routes quickly being dropped in favour of others. The base in Forlì — a city near Bologna — was already dropped after the Summer season, while the airline opened a base in Trapani, Sicily, using Air Connect’s ATR 72.
As of now, one ATR is deployed in the Trapani base, one of the 737s is based in Bergamo (mostly running the shuttle to Rome/Fiumicino) and the other two are largely performing charter flights.
The airline seems to be, in essence, doing routes competitors don’t. Forlì, for instance, barely had any flights before Aeroitalia came along; Ryanair arrived a number of months later, and it nows sells the airport as “Bologna Forlì”.
And even though Bergamo seems to be an outliar — as it is Ryanair’s third-largest base, and its largest in Italy –, the choice of routes seem to avoid competition. For instance, from December Aeroitalia will launch direct flights from the Lombardy city to London/Heathrow.
Amsterdam/Schipol and Paris/Charles de Gaulle are also in sight from Bergamo, Italian aviation news website ItaliaVola reported in October.
Florence seems to be a safe haven from the vicious competition of low-cost carriers as the airport has huge restrictions because of its short runway. This essentially bars the 737-800 and Airbus A320 from operating there with a high payload. As such, Vueling is the largest carrier from the airfield.
As such, Florence Airport is essentially the focus of the legacy carriers in Tuscany, while low-cost airlines tend to operate from Pisa. The notable exception is Volotea, which has announced a base there in 2023; but even them are doing so benefitting from such restrictions.
