THE ITALIAN AIR MARKET: AN ANALYSIS OF THE CURRENT CONTEXT

The paper analyses the current situation of the Italian air market resulting from the deregulation process and from the changes in the internal market. In the first part, we present the current framework of the Italian airports showing the great role of the low cost carriers (hereafter LCC), then the history of the former flag carrier Alitalia is discussed. In the second part, we will discuss the strategies implemented by airports to attract air carriers, by means of three case studies (Aeroporti di Puglia, Alghero’s airport, Emilia Romagna’s airports) . It emerges how discounts on landing and/or terminal charges, revenues guarantees scheme, co-marketing agreement are deeply used in many Italian airport. Since the majority of these airports are publicly owned, it could result both in public transfer to cover losses and in unjustified public expanses to maintain underused or unnecessary airports due only to political reasons. The constraint on public transfer foreseen in the proposed national airport plan, could be the first step towards a more rational framework. On the other hand, due to the high unpredictability and evolution of the aviation sector, the national plan should not become a strict planning tool to imperatively decide which airports should grow and develop