New runway at Florence Airport, step forward for a 400 million project

The Florence airport's new runway project - which has been awaited for 30 years to improve flight safety and boost passenger traffic - takes a significant step towards the start of work. Today, 12 November, the Via-Vas decree, which contains the environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental assessment on the work, was published. The decree contains 14 prescriptions from the Ministry of the Environment and 11 from the Ministry of Culture, which Toscana Aeroporti, the airport's management company, will now have to implement.

"We are satisfied," says the operator, quoting a passage from the Via Commission's opinion, according to which "the preventive, mitigation and compensatory measures described by the proponent are on the whole effective and efficient for adequate containment and reduction of the effects generated by the Masterplan".

Now the services conference will open for the final authorisation for the construction of the 2,200 metre long runway (and almost parallel to the A11 motorway, while the current runway is perpendicular) and the new air terminal, which will boost traffic from last year's 3.5 million passengers to almost 6 million. The investment will exceed 400 million euro with public funding of around 150 million, allocated years ago. However, the road to the start of the work, invoked by the economic categories, is not downhill: the citizens' committees and municipalities of the Florentine plain, which had already won appeals in 2019-2020 to the TAR and the Council of State against the previous project of the runway (2,400 metres long and rotated by 90 degrees), have already announced a new appeal. 'Wrong and impactful work', the mayor of Sesto Fiorentino, Lorenzo Falchi, called it, announcing the appeal as one of his last acts as first citizen, given that he has become a regional councillor and is part of the coalition of President Eugenio Giani (Pd), who is instead in favour of the new runway.

In recent days, the president of Toscana Aeroporti, Marco Carrai, had explained that, after the Via-Vas decree, the notices to expropriate the land will have to be issued, the state aid will have to be communicated to the EU, and the services conference called, which should be concluded 'in late spring, and then work on the runway will begin in June'.

In the meantime, the Florentine 'Amerigo Vespucci' airport has strengthened its collaboration with the low-cost company Volotea, which from September 2026 will base a second aircraft in Florence, an Airbus 319 costing 55 million euros, destined to bring four new routes - Seville, Valencia, Strasbourg and Berlin - and about forty new direct jobs, doubling the current ones.