By Simone Bandini
For at least twenty years it has been constantly growing in the international perception as a tourist and elective destination – for the quality of life, the authenticity and variety of its territory, as well as for the hospitality and spontaneity of its people. Umbria has been able to establish itself as opposed to the formalisms of the landscape and the crowding of the villages of its major cousin, Tuscany, a region that has been conquering the poetic and bucolic imagination of ecstatic travellers for centuries. Let’s analyse his ascent analytically with the numbers of his airport, a real snapshot of his current condition.
Chosen by very popular worldwide stars – but since the 1980s also from a large number of Anglo-Saxon and continental families – Umbria has now little to demonstrate. His admirable combination of spirituality, healthiness of the environment, variety and beauty of the landscape, magnified by the generous welcome of its major cities as well as country and mountains hamlets – make it a sort of centre of the world, where serenity of mind, light -heartedness, green of woods reigns.
In this idyllic photograph, perhaps too romantic, however a fundamental role plays its main Hub, the “San Francesco d’Assisi” international airport which recently communicated to us as in April 2023, thanks to the 56,837 passengers transited, has recorded the new monthly historical record. The traffic of August 2022 was exceeded by 2%, (on the previous record, the passengers were 55,740) and by 94% the traffic recorded in April last year. Thursday 6 April the new historical daily record with 2,677 passengers was also recorded, equal to a +13% compared to 4 July 2022 – previous record – when the passengers were 2,377.
Going to analyse the data in detail, the scheduled flights to international routes scored 37,756 passengers, equal to 67% of the entire commercial traffic, while those on domestic routes scored 18,697 passengers (equal to 33% of the traffic). The general aviation passengers (private flights) were 384.
Umberto Solimeno – general manager of Umbria International Airport – commented: “In addition to being the thirteenth consecutive month of growth, April 2023 was the month of greatest traffic in the history of the airport, recording almost double the passengers compared to April 2022. Thanks to the events scheduled in Umbria – primarily the International Journalism Festival – and the holidays related to Easter and festivities of April 25 and May 1, the aircraft have seen average fillings constantly above 83%, with different rotations that travelled ‘sold out’. An excellent result, which confirms the great attractiveness that airport and territory are demonstrating more and more to have “.
Recall that the IATA “Summer 2023” season, operational until October 28, provides 16 scheduled routes, operated by 6 airlines with up to 98 weekly scheduled flights. In detail there are connections from/to Barcelona (Ryanair), Brindisi (Ryanair), Brussels Charleroi (Ryanair), Bucharest (Ryanair), Cagliari (Ryanair), Catania (Ryanair), Krakow (Ryanair), London Heathrow (British Airways), London Stansted (Ryanair), Malta (Ryanair), Olbia (Aeroitalia), Palermo (Ryanair), Rotterdam (Transavia), Tirana (Wizz Air), Tirana (Albawings) and Vienna (Ryanair). All flights can be purchased on the sites of the airlines that operate the connections.
There were twelve consecutive months of growth for the “San Francesco d’Assisi” which, after two years marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, in April 2022 saw the beginning of the recovery recording the new record “month on month” (29,240 Passengers, equal to +11% on April 2015, previous April record), and opening a path that has seen a constant growth of traffic, as well as new daily, seasonal and annual records. Already the first data of the summer season 2023, which began at the end of March, had bode well about the continuation and consolidation of this path, confirming the great attractiveness of the airport and the territory.
Info: www.airport.umbria.it