The best way to protect Crotone airport is to join the board of directors of Sacal, the management company of the Calabrian airports whose majority shares are in the hands of the Calabria Region. He asks the Democratic Party of Crotone which this morning held a sit in in the square in front of the Pitagora airport to protest against the state of abandonment in which the infrastructure finds itself due to the responsibility – in their opinion – of the centre-right regional government. On that occasion, the provincial secretary of the Democratic Party, Leo Barberio, stated that «all the funding planned for this airport is at a standstill, from the extension of the runway to the Ils system, to the modernization of the airport and the fire station. . Here, however, they immediately built a hangar for civil protection to divert Canadian air traffic here which creates problems for civil flights: they decided to put it in Crotone because Crotone, for the centre-right, is a second-class airport.” In this regard, the Democratic Party’s request to the Calabria Region is to “accelerate the procedures that are used to speed up the contracts needed for this airport”.
For the president of the provincial Democratic Party, Carolina Girasole“the numbers of passengers or party affiliations cannot silence us: more investments are needed at this airport if we want to give an opportunity to the development of the territory”.
Of a completely different opinion Sergio Torrominoprovincial coordinator of Forza Italia in Crotone: “The PD sit-in protest at the Sant’Anna airport in Crotone is truly grotesque. During the years of government in the centre-left Region, we are talking about the five-year period from 2014 to 2019 , not only the Crotone airport, but also that of Reggio Calabria, were in a comatose state for the regional airport system in which it proceeded without a serious industrial plan and in which the airlines abandoned the Crotone airport because it lacked necessary infrastructure. In the face of many announcements from the regional administration, Sant’Anna with the left continued to open and close every four months. Yet, in those years of very serious crisis, the Democratic Party did not at all feel the need to take to the streets, with the civic committees that had been created in the meantime to defend the S.Anna airport, to denounce, so perhaps it was the case , the abandoned conditions in which the airport found itself. With a great sense of timing, however, it is doing so today, precisely at the moment in which, with this regional government – which established Sacal as the sole manager of the three Calabrian airports – the Sant’Anna airport will close the year 2024 with above 270 thousand passengers and with growth of more than 20%. Unequivocal numbers with which, in 2023 alone, over 220 thousand passengers were registered, but above all with an increasingly positive estimated expectation: for 2025 it is expected that the airport will well exceed 300 thousand passengers. Crotone airport can currently count on 5 routes, with Ryanair having strengthened its winter operations and will operate with 22 weekly flights compared to 12 last winter, a 73% increase in flights and the launch of a new route in the summer summer for Germany. In short, Crotone is growing at double the speed of the country’s airports, but the Democratic Party finds it sensible to organize a sit-in protest. Fortunately, to the chatter of the Dem exponents, this regional government and Sacal respond with concrete actions and are working to overcome the obstacle of the closure of the airport at 8pm and attract more and more flights to allow the citizens of the Crotone province to reach their destinations more easily. Italian and European cities”.