Sacbo, 16.7 million passengers in 2025. With the new terminal they will rise to 17 million

(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor)- After a record 2024 with more than 17 million passengers, the Bergamo Orio Al Serio airport (managed by Sacbo) aims to close 2025 with a traffic of 16.7 million passengers; numbers that allow it to confirm itself as the third Italian airport by traffic. "We are over the budget we have planned," explained the president Giovanni Sanga, in an interview with Radiocor. "By the end of the year we will reach around 16.7 million passengers." According to the president, the year that is drawing to a close 'has been a challenging one because we have had to manage a high flow of passengers with many construction sites open, but I would say that we have succeeded in our objective. We have put in place a series of synergies to avoid overlaps, queues, and moments of confusion within the airport, and so the year has developed in a very intense manner, but also with its own rationality and orderly movement of passengers'.

Over the past five years, Bergamo airport has made a series of investments aimed at modernising and making the airport infrastructure more efficient, for a total economic value of over EUR 300 million. "Next year," said Sanga, "we will have a new infrastructure in place because with the inauguration of the departures terminal, which will take place on 25 November, we will have a series of new, impressive spaces. On the upper floor of the airport alone we will have more than 7 thousand square metres where the new boarding and security controls will be located; the expansion of the check-in area will be approximately 3 thousand square metres including spaces for checking luggage in the hold with the use of the most advanced technologies. We have also enlarged the hall for non-Schengen area boarding with two new gates".

All this will enable the airport to accommodate a higher flow of passengers. "We expect to arrive in 2026 at around 17 million passengers, but the most important thing will be the ability to guarantee them a more adequate, efficient, modern and up-to-date service. Just think that as far as controls are concerned, even in Bergamo you will no longer have to remove liquids from your bags, so everything will be easier. All this while always taking into the utmost consideration the space for security operations, because an airport must on the one hand guarantee maximum security and on the other hand maximum functionality'.

The Winter Olympics Milan-Cortina 2026 will also be a driver of growth. "It is a further challenge Today it is still difficult to define in numerical terms what impact it will have, but we are ready and we are holding a series of meetings with the Lombardy authorities because this will still be an airport that, being halfway between Milan and the Veneto region to get to the slopes of Cortina, will certainly be an essential reference point.

Sacbo has 'stability in both accounts and dividends. It is clear that we must take into account the investments we have made. In five years we have invested almost 300 million euro, all with our own funds," the president explained. The Pnrr, in fact, has not established any funding or contributions for the airport system, so it is all borne by Sacbo's budget. We then take into account that in the five-year period we experienced the Covid-19 pandemic. In the years of the Covid we had losses of 20 million a year and losses in revenue of 300 million. In spite of all this, we have invested around 300 million to make the airport infrastructure fit for the times and the new needs we have before us. So 2025 will be a year of financial stability'.