Air travel: Italia leads the way this summer with 5,000 flights a day

Rising fuel prices and international tensions did not halt air traffic during the summer of 2026. Despite initial fears, August ended with a 2.3 per cent increase in flights to and from Europe compared with 2025.

Whilst we await a clearer picture of the impact of the ‘lockdown’ that affected London’s airports, according to Eurocontrol data, Italia led the growth in European air traffic during the summer months, with an average of over 5,000 flights per day (including departures and arrivals). In August, 310 more aircraft took off or landed at Italian airports every day compared with last year. This represents an increase of 6.5 per cent, the second-highest on the continent after Poland’s (+7.6 per cent). Of these 310 additional daily movements, 50 were concentrated at Rome Fiumicino (+31) and Milan Malpensa (+19), with a 3 per cent increase at both airports. The remainder – approximately 84 per cent of the national increase – was recorded outside these two . This trend is also confirmed by local data from Aeroporti 2030, updated to July 2026. At the height of summer, the fastest-growing Italian airports were Bergamo, Venice and Palermo, each with around a thousand more movements per month than in July 2025.

Italian air traffic is also being driven by tourist demand for the islands: airports in Sicily and Sardinia recorded an overall increase of 9.4 per cent, accounting for almost 30 per cent of the national increase.

Summer tourism does indeed appear to be shifting increasingly towards the Mediterranean, resulting in an increase in August in the number of flights to southern European countries: +4.9 per cent for Greece and +5.8 per cent for Spain.

By contrast, summer air traffic slowed in the main continental countries, such as France (-0.5 per cent), Germany (-1.9 per cent) and the Netherlands (-1.9 per cent).