Bologna Airport, 100 million new building websites in two years | EUROtoday

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«Record development won’t ever be adverse for an airport supervisor, we’re actually coming back from a difficult 12 months, however the difficulties we face in Italy, the place air visitors has already exceeded pre-Covid 2019 ranges, are higher than the issues from colleagues in Germany and France over the weak point of their respective markets.” Nazareno Ventola, general manager since 2013 and also managing director of Bologna Airport for ten years, thus comments on the historic record that the airport achieved in 2024, the first time in which the barrier of 10 million passengers was broken (10.764 million per to be precise) with growth of 8.1% over 2023.

He masterplan

An increase higher than expected which has complicated the management of the “Guglielmo Marconi”, dealing with 200 million euros of expansion and redevelopment works foreseen in the master plan for 2030 – of which half will be investments concentrated between this year and next – which are having inevitable repercussions on travellers, especially during the summer, when there was the historic monthly peak of 1.12 million passengers in the middle of August. «The rebound in traffic was faster than expected, we did everything we could to mitigate the inconveniences – continues Ventola – which however cannot be eliminated because we are intervening “with an open heart” in the Schengen area of ​​the boarding gates. We have already added 750 m2 of space, the crowding of the past can no longer be seen. And we are accelerating the works, in 2024 we have reached the figure of 40 million euros of works, after the 32 million invested in 2023, and a further 50 million are planned both this year and in 2026″.

Scanning of jobs

The eight new strains of the safety verify space can be accomplished by subsequent spring and the primary block of over a thousand parking areas within the multi-storey automotive park can be accomplished by June 2025 (the second block is scheduled for spring 2026). Then it will likely be the flip of interventions to additional increase each the air-side and the land-side for this infrastructure within the coronary heart of Bologna which has change into the seventh Italian airport by variety of passengers and third by cargo, which centralizes 95% of the air visitors of your entire Via Emilia, whereas the ports of Parma, Forlì and Rimini are struggling to stay available on the market. «It is the airways that resolve the place to fly, we’re prepared to debate with the brand new regional administration», anticipates the CEO, who subsequent 12 months will already begin engaged on the 2031-46 Masterplan and confronted with the quantity of works within the pipeline hopes for a consolidation of numbers for 2025 and never new information to have a good time. «On the operational facet, it needs to be remembered that we requested Enac to change into a “coordinated slot” airport, and now we have been so since this winter. A selection that permits us to raised distribute flights, avoiding overlapping peaks. For 2025 we’re aiming for an adjustment of round 10 million passengers and now we have additionally taken into consideration a slight contraction, given the non permanent penalization within the Schengen boarding corridor”. Now there is anticipation for the “summer season 2025” flight program which will be disclosed at the end of the month and for the 2024 final balance which should confirm the double-digit run of the first nine months, which closed with a +13.4% turnover at 118 .7 million euros, an EBITDA of 42.2 million, up by +23.9% and a profit that jumped by +33.3% to 19.5 million.