Airports, Di Palma (Enac): “1.2 billion plan. It will also help airports that have been penalized up to now, such as Parma”

On the infrastructure front to grow and recover lost ground, with the so-called ‘Ripartenza Rock’ we have already defined a plan worth over 1.2 billion. Air transport was excluded from the PNRR and this was an ideological prejudice” that penalized a sector that “proves to be an essential element of economic development of the country and also of the European continent”. This was said, on the sidelines of a meeting of the Rimini Meeting, by the president of ENAC, Pierluigi Di Palma according to whom “these investments are being made with a bit of a delay because the Covid period, in some way, has meant that companies, businesses did not believe in this restart”.

As for the possible request to airport managers to take action to improve infrastructure or to network and integrate between airports, he argued, “we are evaluating not only the operational but also the infrastructural capacity of the airports. This – added Di Palma – will actually induce operators to find other airports where they can operate and will certainly favor the airport network for example of Emilia-Romagna with the other airports” in addition to Bologna, “which up to now have been quite penalized like Parma, Forlì and Rimini”.

In any case, Di Palma argued, «perhaps only we as Enac said, during the Covid period, that there would actually be a restart. Others did not believe it and therefore there are delays in investments. We are trying to recover this delay in investments that must actually offer above all quality of services for passengers with particular attention especially to reduced mobility».
In fact, the president of Enac concluded, “by anticipating the times, Italy has already won several bets compared to the rest of Europe. We have grown over 10% in the first half of 2024, other countries are suffering much more”.