An Agenda for Italian Airports. Future Investments, Management and Regulation

This paper examines factors underlying the investment decisions on airport infrastructures and the main features of the economic related regulation in Italy. In order to evaluate the system's future capacity to compete globally and at an intermodal level following the forecasted increase in the demand level from 2011, the analysis has encompassed the present capacity and besides the existence of a regulation suitable to future investments needs. On traffic levels, basically in line with the rest of Europe, the authors found critical urgencies in the accessibility of Italian airports and in land side services, with the severe risk of reaching the saturation level of land side infrastructures by 2012, as well as air side congestion problems at peak hours. Revenues, operating costs and investments per passenger of Italian airports are consistently lower than those of the main European airport managers. The complexity of regulation of airports tariffs has not really helped returns, thus discouraging new investments. The evaluation of investments planned by some airport managers in 2009 provided some useful preliminary indications for future development of a methodology of the Programme-Contracts to come. The enforcement of the recent EU Directive 2009/12/CE could provide the occasion for solving some critical points of the Italian regulation, still remaining open.