As perhaps expected from many quarters, the traffic data published by Assaeroporti for the month of March 2024 does not seem rosy for Lamezia Terme International Airport. A deficit, compared to 2023, of 7.3% on the passenger front (171,188) and 12.6% on total movements (1,472), an average of 148 passengers per flight, on an average capacity of around 180 seats (82% load factor), while at quarter level, in the first three months of 2024 Lamezia lost 10.1% of passengers (471,416) and 12.7% of total movements (4,299).
At the same time, Crotone loses 5.4% (and -32% of movements) in the “total year 2024” but grew by 2.3% in March, but above all Reggio Calabria rises with +27.9% of passengers (74,386) totals, thus making “Tito Minniti” one of the airports in the South with the highest growth. All this excluding the Ryanair data not yet available for Reggio Calabria, given that the routes were recently inaugurated. Data from the first quarter are “merciless and worrying” according to the councilor Rosario Piccioni, for whom «Lamezia is at a substantial loss, if the Reggio airport grows we can only be pleased, but what we had feared is materializing».
«These are data that we imagined – says the mayor Paolo Mascaro – in the last months of the last year there was data that in the first months of 2024 there would be a contraction compared to the super record data of the first months of 2023. Those who are attentive know well that in 2023 for Lamezia airport there were some companies that have not confirmed certain types of flights. In the first 5 months of 2023 there was a significant increase compared to the record year of 2019, while already in the last 7 months of 2023 there was a contraction compared to 2019, so much so that we closed a little lower than 2019 ».
