SPECIAL REPORT: EUROPE’S REGIONAL AIRPORTS
Keeping Sicily connected Natale Chieppa, managing director of Palermo-Falcone Borsellino Airport operator, GESAP, reflects on the vital role his gateway plays in the growth and development of Sicily. How important is your airport to the city and region you serve in terms of connectivity, jobs and its economic and social impact? All regional airports are important, but arguably those located on an island are even more crucial to the communities they serve, and PMO is no exception to that rule. Palermo is one of four airports in Sicily which between them traditionally handle around 19 million passengers per annum as they provide a very important connectivity role for the territory since, for many people and businesses, air transportation is the only way of travelling to and from Sicily. To give that some perspective, in 2019, people living within our catchment area made an average of 3.8 trips each compared to 2.9 in the rest of Italy. In terms of jobs, we estimate that at least 2,500 people are directly employed at PMO. This, of course, is a much larger figure if you include all those indirectly employed as a result of the existence of Palermo Airport. Indeed, some university studies and consultancy firms in Europe estimate that 900 jobs – direct and indirect – are created for every one million passengers handled by an airport. In terms of economics, research by a number of well-know consultancy firms suggests that each arriving or departing passenger
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AIRPORT WORLD/ISSUE 1, 2022
boosts the local profit and loss (PNL) of each airport by close to €500, which in our case, would have resulted in a positive contribution to the local PNL of about €3.5 billion in 2019. These kind of figures can help you understand just how important PMO is to Palermo and the entire territory of Sicily in terms of its positive social and economic impact.
How would you describe the airport’s current situation in terms of its recovery from the COVID pandemic? PMO together with some other Italian regional airports located in the south of Italy are recovering faster than the national average due to the increase in domestic traffic, particularly in the 2021 summer season. In 2020, compared to the average traffic loss of -72.3% in Italy, our airport experienced a loss of -61%. In 2021, the average loss of traffic across Italy was -58% whereas PMO performed ‘better’ in recording a decline of -35%. It is worth noting that in the second half of 2021, Palermo was often among the top five best performing airports in Europe for gateways usually handling between five and ten million passengers yearly. For the current calendar year, our actual year-to-date trend up until February 23, 2022, is -20% compared to 2019.
