The new National Airports Plan 2026-2035 was supposed to indicate a concrete perspective for the future of Italian airports. For Pantelleria, on the other hand, the impression of a formal presence remains, not accompanied by a real strategy.
The airport continues to be classified as an airport of national interest, but this is not a new recognition: Pantelleria already possessed this qualification in the previous set-up of 2015.
The real question is therefore another: what development is planned for the airport in the next ten years?
The answer, reading the Plan, is disappointing.
No specific investments are indicated, no clear interventions are planned on the terminal or infrastructures, there is no mention of new routes, of seasonal adjustment of connections or of a precise function of the airport within the Sicilian airport system.
Pantelleria is included in the system of eastern Sicily together with Catania and Comiso, a location that appears at least questionable and that the Plan does not motivate. When the document then moves on to operational choices, it speaks almost exclusively of Catania and Comiso. Pantelleria disappears.
The contradiction also emerges in the numbers. The Plan envisages traffic of 233,089 passengers by 2035, but indicates a capacity rounded to 0.2 million, i.e. about 200,000 passengers, for the terminal. Airside capacity, on the other hand, is indicated at 300,000 passengers.
Even considering the approximation of the data, an obvious question remains: if traffic growth is expected, why not plan to adapt the infrastructure necessary to support it?
The risk is that the rounding of the numbers makes demand and capacity appear perfectly coincident, while hiding a possible insufficiency of the terminal.
But the most serious limitation of the Plan concerns territorial continuity.
For Pantelleria, air transport is not just tourism or market. It is the right of residents to reach hospitals, schools, universities, offices, workplaces and family members.
The Plan recognizes in general terms the importance of public service obligations, but does not offer any concrete and structural guarantee for Pantelleria.
No certain routes, minimum frequencies, stable fares, adequate aircraft capacities or a multi-year duration of the territorial continuity regime are established.
Once again, everything remains entrusted to tenders, temporary funding, extensions and decisions often taken close to deadlines.
A Plan that looks to 2035 should have indicated how to overcome this precariousness. It should have clearly stated that the territorial continuity of Pantelleria is an essential service to be guaranteed permanently, not a concession to be rediscussed periodically.
Instead, Pantelleria is counted, classified and included in the tables, but not really planned.
The judgment cannot therefore be positive.
The Plan confirms an already existing qualification, provides for growth without planning the necessary infrastructures and treats territorial continuity as a general principle, without transforming it into a concretely guaranteed right.
Local and regional institutions should ask the Ministry for precise answers: what role is assigned to the airport, what investments are planned, why Pantelleria is part of the eastern system and how territorial continuity will be guaranteed until 2035.
Because an island cannot live on statistical forecasts and extensions. It needs planning, investments and certain connections.