The demand for rapid “point-to-point” travel, both commercial and private, is growing, especially in Asian countries. Air tourism and the demand for professionals are also increasing, consequently also training flights. Thus every day in the world there are almost forty million takeoffs
After what was celebrated on Sunday 26 July, when the new civil air traffic recordwith 8,446 movements managed by the National Flight Assistance Agency (Enav) over the course of a day and in the national airspace, we can ask ourselves a logical question: why, month after month, is civil aviation growing more and more in the world and, consequently, also in Italy? The causes, often linked to each other, are different, and in the Italian sky they led to an increase of 106 movements compared to the previous twelve months.
What’s behind this record
At the basis of Italian growth is the growing need of some communities and territories to have proximity air connections. And, since it is not possible to build new airports due to lack of space, even those that were previously underused must become profitable, but this happens (usually) above one million passengers. Who must be attracted by new proposals. Demand is also generated by the increasingly critical travel by road, with the motorway network which has not grown in recent decades, and the typical difficulties persist due to maintenance work on road networks dating back to the 1960s, which are unable to support tenfold traffic volumes. Thus, airports that were once only military or decentralized have now become strategic for civil aviation, from Bergamo (17 million passengers) to Trapani Birgi (1,007,409 passengers in 2025).
The consequences of the increase in airline flights
But an increase in air connections also brings with it the growth of flight personnel (crews), as well as maintenance technicians, so the air traffic of flight schools also grows (it takes about three years to train a sky professional from scratch), which in the summer adds to that of general aviation (tourist and business). So more air connections, more demand for pilots and, consequently, more students in flight schoolsand therefore also more local training flights. These fly routes different from the commercial ones, occupy different airspace, but are still flights managed by Enav and are registered. There are also examples of coexistence between schools and commercial flights in the same airport, as happens, for example, in Catania Fontanarossa, where the local Aero Club and passenger traffic operate on the same runway.
The situation in the Italian skies
Even if seasonal connections generate the traffic peak (increase in connections to and from summer destinations), the demand for cargo transport is also growing, approximately 23% of the flights that we can follow on tracking websites. Another factor, although still limited in numbers compared to what happens in other European nations, is constituted by air tourism that comes from abroad and passes through the Italian sky, and then stopover with us or continue to other destinations such as Greece, Spain, Balkan and non-European countries. In the Italian territory, there are also tourist airports of great value, particularly sought after by international private traffic, from Olbia Costa Smeralda, which actually excels for private jet movements, to the historic Nicelli airport in Venice Lido, created in the 1920s and today still a grassy runway suitable for small aircraft, passing through the Marina di Campo airport on the island of Elba.
How airline flights have changed in the rest of the world
The same trend of redevelopment of smaller airports occurs in general throughout Europe, so the destinations that were previously the prerogative of a few are attracting more and more peoplei, like the slopes on the Croatian islands of Brač and Mali Lošinj. Certainly, at the base of everything there is demographic growth and greater spending capacity for travel; there are low-cost airlines and the sharply increasing demand for flights from Asian countries. Therefore, after the years of the Covid-19 pandemic, the “point to point” air transport model has definitively replaced the “Hub & Spoke” one which saw a few large airports concentrate flights and then redistribute them.
Finally, among the phenomena to be recorded, there is also geopolitical instability and ongoing conflicts in the world, which force many companies to travel new routes to avoid dangerspushing connections even into our sky. This is the case of flights that avoid Ukrainian airspace and are headed southwest, like those that once flew over Iran and Yemen from the southern hemisphere, and today turn northwest, arriving in European skies.
What could happen in the future
The technology used for air traffic management and the training of controllers still allow a high level of safety to be maintained in increasingly busy skies, but it is to be expected that the development of commercial aviation in continents which have so far been limited in terms of connections will lead to new challenges to face and solve. Think for example of Africa, currently bringing up the rear, with a growth of less than 4% per year in the number of connections generated by its territory.
How many are there today? commercial flights worldwide? From the official sources of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) we are now approaching the 40 million a yearwith a total of 5 billion and 250 million tickets sold.
