Rome FCO Continues Its Unstoppable Development: The News for 2024!
After a three-year record-breaking period in terms of new routes development, Rome FCO airport closed 2023 with 40.5 Mln pax, recovering 100% of pre-pandemic volume as of October, with a growing trend through the last part of the year (+6% December 2023 vs 2019).
More than 50 new routes launched (including 17 new destinations!), 7 new entrant airlines, more than 200 destinations to 70 countries thus connecting all the world's continents to Rome with an outlook for 2024 continuing to be positive.
The year kicks off with the start-up of 2 new carriers to FCO in March, Biman Bangladesh to Dhaka and Uzbekistan Airways to Tashkent. Summer 2024 will see Volotea’s new flight to Brest, Eurowings to Hannover and Nuremberg, and Skyapls to Mostar. In June SunExpress will activate the new route to Izmir and ITA Airways to Accra, followed by Dakar in July; October will be the month of Air Mauritius making its debut in Rome with the new flight to the Mauritian capital.
Not only new destinations: in Summer 24, there's a notable surge in long-haul flights to North America with up to 39 departures/day (+31% vs. Sum19), driven by US carriers (up to 27 departures/day, +61% vs. peak Sum19). FCO will be the first airport in the European continent to offer American Airlines first class! Again, ITA Airways introduces new routes to Chicago and Toronto, while United Airlines expands with a second daily to Washington.
One of the most noteworthy trends is the strong deseasonalization, topic very dear to the industry: in February 2024 there were over 70 weekly frequencies to North America, almost double vs February 2019 (nearly 40 weekly frequencies).
In Canada, there’s a substantial increase of up to 32% in weekly flights during the peak, thanks to Air Canada, Westjet and ITA Airways (new daily to Toronto).
China will see an increase vs 2019 thanks to the return of 6 of the major Chinese carriers operating in 2019 to 9 destinations.
ITA Airways is launching new services to Kuwait, Jeddah and Riyadh, on top of the capacity growth to Middle East.
Looking at short/medium haul, Wizz Air is set to expand its operations in 2024, with 13 based aircraft (+2 vs. 2023) launching several new routes, while Ryanair will have 11 based aircraft (+2 vs. 2023).
The FCO path to excellence doesn’t stop, neither with reference to aviation development, nor to quality as recently recognized by ACI World, that awarded FCO as the Best Airport in Europe for quality services to passengers for the 7th time in a row, in addition to the 5-Star Skytrax rated in 2023.
Finally, 2025 will be the year of Jubilee in Rome. This is the most important and largest catholic event, happening every 25 years. The city of Rome will expect over 30 million pilgrims coming to celebrate the Holy Year, offering huge traffic opportunities for airlines from all over the world.