“There are no flights, we are forced to go to Lamezia or even Catania. What a scandal”. It’s still: “Going home at Christmas has become impossible, there are few flights, the seats have been sold out for months and the costs are prohibitive, we’re talking about 400-500 euros each way”. How many times have we heard this type of complaint aboutReggio Calabria Airport, especially in December before the Christmas holidays? Well, brace yourselves: what’s happened in the last few weeks it denies many clichés and photographs the true situation of Reggio Calabria, overturning the usual urban legends.
For Reggio Calabria, in fact, this year was included thanks to the work of the Calabria Region new flight to Rome operated by SkyAlps to one price capped at just 100 euros each way precisely for the Christmas holidays: they were there 20 flights scheduled from December 19th to January 13th to allow people from Reggio to return home for the Christmas holidays, solving the age-old problem of “few flights at exorbitant costs”. Well, the company had to cancel almost all of these flights (only 4 remain active, perhaps for a short while) because no one booked tickets. Even for the Roma-Reggio Calabria scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday 19 December, there were only 5 places reserved; also for the one the day after tomorrow, Wednesday 20 December, just 5 places reserved. And a plane that is not a private jet does not fly for five people: so it was cancelled.
The Rome-Reggio flights for Thursday 21st (10 booked), Friday 22nd (13 booked) and Saturday 23rd (46 booked) remain confirmed at the moment, but it cannot be ruled out that they will be canceled if bookings remain so few in the next few days.
But then It’s not true that there are no flights and/or what those that are there cost too much. The truth is exactly different: there are no users, there is no market. Flights could offer even ten, one hundred, one thousand at rock-bottom prices, maybe even free, but they would remain half empty because the problem is not the flights and it is not the airport. The problem is the city. We have been writing this on StrettoWeb for years: Airports are not what make cities work; on the contrary they are the cities that make the airports work. Airlines work on the market: the day people want to travel to Reggio Calabria, all the airlines will compete to fly to Reggio Calabria. However, if no one wants to fly to Reggio Calabria, no one will want to organize flights to Reggio Calabria.
The real problem is that Reggio Calabria is not attractive. It doesn’t attract tourists, it now rejects and rejects even its fellow citizens who no longer want to even return for the holidays. In Reggio Calabria – for example – this year it isn’t even Christmas. There are no events, there are no places of attraction, there are no concerts, there are no markets: there is nothing unlike the villages, towns and cities of all the surrounding areas (from Palmi to Corigliano Calabro, from Crotone to Cosenza) where for the holidays some of the most famous artists at national level will arrive, who have already been announced for many months. Which tourist can think of coming to spend Christmas in Reggio Calabria? Look at how Piazza Castello is reduced in these hours… Even those who live in this city feel discouraged about leaving their homes, and do we want people to come on planes?
The same goes for the summer: while all the other cities plan a list of events well in advance, in Reggio the Reggio summer – strictly with unknown and unlikely “local artists” – has been presented for years at the end of July: How can you think of attracting tourists in this way?
Without tourists, the locals remain. And they now live alone in Reggio Calabria 169,846 people (census as of July 31, 2023), approximately 22 thousand people less than twelve years ago. Among these residents we have 13 thousand children under 9 years old and 11 thousand elderly people over 80 years old. In the city where the average mobility sees an important obstacle already in overcoming the Pillars of Hercules of Villa San Giovanni in the North, His image ad East, the beach to the West e Saline in the South, there are so few people inclined to travel that not even the existence of an airport could be justified by the market but it’s about a luxury for the select few accustomed to traveling and using it periodically.
The fact that everyone on Facebook is an expert, or rather presumptuous in the sense that someone gets up in the morning with the desire to go to France, Germany or New York and would like a personal flight from the airport behind their home intersection, is a another matter and there is little that can be done. Ditto for those who have a brother or cousin who works in Biella or Merano. In general, there is little that can be done about ignorance. And the next time someone complains because “there are no flights” or why “they cost too much“, “especially at Christmas” show him the Rome-Reggio data for 20 December 2023 for just one hundred euros: only 5 tickets booked, flight cancelled.
The problem is not the airport. The problem is the city. Until Reggio is back viva, attractive, industrious e full of high-level eventsOf places of aggregationthey will also be able to put all the flights in the world but they will always remain sadly empty. Before the flights you need to find the people who want to get to the city, and to find the people who want to get to the city we need to create reasons to bring people to Reggio Calabria. That’s where we need to start, not the other way around. And it is a story that Reggio has dragged on for too many years: so the Airport has become just another alibi with which the political class that has badly governed the city for ten long years now tries to shift its responsibilities onto something else.
The news, therefore, is not that there are no flights. The news is that there is no longer anyone who wants to come to Reggio.
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2023-12-18 21:24:00
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