Salerno Airport Lost 41.6% of Its Passengers in 2026, and Nobody Has Published Why

The numbers, series by series

Every passenger figure here comes from Assaeroporti's monthly statistics pages unless stated otherwise. Assaeroporti counts arriving and departing passengers on scheduled and charter flights, plus direct transit and general aviation. A return trip counts twice. ENAC, the civil aviation authority, publishes a separate annual series that leaves out direct transit. The two are never mixed in this report, and we found no ENAC airport-level figure for Salerno in 2024 or 2025.

The decline holds over nine months. From January to September 2026 Salerno carried 194,094 passengers, down 39.9%. August alone was 37,552, down 36.2%, and September 26,895, down 26.6%. Over the same nine months Naples grew 7.9% to 11,137,665, and Italy's 41 reporting airports grew 5.5% to 187,124,810.

The full-year figures run the other way. Salerno handled 179,123 passengers in 2024, most of them after the July reopening, and 380,606 in 2025, an increase of 112.5%. Its 2025 total equalled 2.9% of Naples' 13,271,522. In January–August 2026 Salerno's share of the two airports' combined passengers fell to 1.7%, from 3.1% a year earlier, on our arithmetic.

Naples gained 709,565 passengers in the first eight months of 2026. That is about six times Salerno's loss of 118,910. No source links the two figures. The airport totals cannot show whether any traveller who once used Salerno now flies from Naples.

Where the loss came from

Assaeroporti splits passengers into four groups: domestic, international, direct transit, and general aviation and other. The first three make up commercial traffic. Commercial passengers fell 42.7% in January–August 2026, from 279,188 to 159,880. General aviation and other passengers rose 5.8%, from 6,921 to 7,319, which slightly offsets the commercial loss.

International traffic carries the decline. It lost 95,838 passengers, or 80.6% of the net fall of 118,910. Domestic traffic lost 23,470, or 19.7%. Direct transit was unchanged at 222 passengers. These shares are ours, computed from the published category totals, and they sum to the published change.

The mix has flipped. In January–August 2025 international passengers made up 60.6% of Salerno's commercial traffic. In January–August 2026 domestic passengers made up 53.9% of it.

Late summer shows the shift most clearly. In August 2026 domestic passengers rose 48.6% to 13,707 while international passengers fell 54.1% to 21,942. September followed the same pattern: domestic up 37.3% to 15,866, international down 58.7% to 10,007. In February 2026 Aeroitalia and GESAC, the operator, announced a Salerno base from 22 May with four domestic routes. Assaeroporti does not publish passengers by airline, so the carrier's part in the domestic rise cannot be measured.

Aircraft movements tell a second story. Salerno recorded 4,733 movements in January–August 2026, only 6.4% fewer than a year earlier. Of those, 3,407 were general aviation and other flights, up 8.2%, and 1,326 were commercial, down 30.5% from 1,907. General aviation made up 72% of all movements. September 2026 shows the same effect: movements rose 22.2% to 803, but only 257 of them were commercial. A headline movement count therefore says little about airline service at Salerno.

Commercial passengers per commercial movement fell from about 146 to about 121, a derived figure. The loss combines fewer airline flights with fewer passengers on each one. Seats and load factors are not published, so the second part cannot be split between smaller aircraft and emptier ones.

When the fall started

Monthly figures date the turn to late 2025. October 2025 was down 9.0%, at 26,547 passengers. November 2025 fell 56.6%, to 15,483 from 35,703. December fell 54.4%, to 15,819. In November international passengers dropped 85.2%, to 2,800.

November 2025 was the first month of steep decline. Domestic traffic had softened earlier. In August 2025 domestic passengers were 35.1% below August 2024, while international passengers more than doubled and the airport as a whole grew 52.8%.

The late-2024 base is unusually high for a first winter. Salerno carried 35,703 passengers in November 2024 and 34,727 in December 2024. Naples fell 13.7% in November 2024 and 15.6% in December 2024 on the year before. In November and December 2025 Naples rose 44.9% and 43.2%. We found no source that explains Naples' weak late 2024. The numbers alone cannot show whether the two airports' winter swings are connected.

The fall continued into 2026. Press reports citing Assaeroporti put June 2026 at 28,848 passengers, down 32.4%, July at 35,320, down 31%, and the first half at 94,327, down 46.4%. They tie to Assaeroporti's January–August total: 94,327 plus 35,320 plus 37,552 equals 167,199.

The ramp-up base deserves equal weight. ENAC and GESAC said on 21 July 2025 that the first year of scheduled operations had closed with 370,000 passengers. January–August 2026 is still 3.1 times January–August 2024, which covered seven weeks of scheduled flights. Salerno in 2026 is smaller than in 2025 and larger than in its opening summer.

The routes, as the press documented them

GESAC and most airlines publish no full route history for Salerno. The timeline below is assembled from operator and airline releases where they exist and from press reports where they do not. Each row names its source and its type.

At the reopening on 11 July 2024 GESAC announced 20 initial destinations: six domestic, seven international and seven charter. A year later, on 21 July 2025, ENAC and GESAC listed 16 direct destinations, 13 of them international, flown by easyJet, Ryanair, Volotea, Wizz Air and British Airways. Jet2 had already dropped its planned Manchester and Birmingham routes in March 2025, before they launched, and said it was "continually reviewing our flying programme", according to TTG Media.

The contraction began with the 2025–26 winter schedule. Trasporti-Italia reported on 22 October 2025 that seven routes were suspended and four kept: Bergamo, Milan Malpensa, Turin and Vienna. In December easyJet dropped Berlin and Geneva for 2026. Italiavola & Travel relayed an easyJet statement first reported by Il Mattino, saying the airline was keeping "le rotte più popolari e con la maggiore domanda" (the most popular routes with the highest demand). Gazzetta di Salerno reported on 13 December 2025 that Wizz Air had gone from seven Salerno destinations to none and that British Airways had taken Gatwick off sale.

Reports on easyJet's Malpensa route conflict. Italiavola (4 December 2025) said it would continue at two flights a week until 16 October 2026. Salernonotizie (10 December 2025), citing the FlySalerno association's social media page, said easyJet had removed it for good. GESAC's own list of flights for November 2026 includes easyJet to Malpensa.

In 2026 new capacity was announced on the domestic side. Aeroitalia said in February that it would base one 100-seat Embraer 190 at Salerno from 22 May, with 19 weekly flights to Malpensa, Turin, Genoa and Trieste. Ryanair's Charleroi, Stansted and Vienna routes ended for the season between 21 and 24 October 2026, according to the airport timetable as reported by WEtravel, which adds that those end dates do not by themselves prove permanent cancellation. Wizz Air announced Budapest, Warsaw and Tirana from 6 June 2027, as reported by WEtravel and Qualitytravel.

On 16 October 2026 GESAC chief executive Roberto Barbieri said easyJet would add London, Paris, Basel and Lugano, LiraTV reported the next day, adding that the routes would be made official later. We found no easyJet announcement of them by 1 November 2026.

What the operator and others have said

Explanations circulate, and none comes with data. Barbieri spoke at a conference at Salerno's chamber of commerce on 16 October 2026. "Su Salerno economicamente siamo in una fase per noi non conveniente," he said (economically, Salerno is at a stage that does not pay for us). GESAC would carry on "anche perché il mercato si sta muovendo" (also because the market is moving). He named road access and the planned light-metro station as open problems: "senza collegamento l'alimentazione dei passeggeri diventa difficoltosa" (without a connection, feeding passengers in becomes difficult). LiraTV reported the remarks.

WEtravel reported on 31 October 2026 that Barbieri had earlier acknowledged easyJet's economic difficulties and had said "un buon coefficiente di riempimento non garantisce automaticamente la redditività di una rotta" (a good load factor does not automatically guarantee a route's profitability). The outlet gives no date or venue for those remarks. In its own analysis WEtravel judged that Salerno's problem did not seem to stem from a simple lack of demand, and that there was not enough evidence to say GESAC was deliberately taking traffic away from Salerno. Both are the outlet's judgements, and neither cites route data.

Antonio Ilardi, president of Federalberghi Salerno, the provincial hoteliers' association, was quoted by Trasporti-Italia in October 2025: "Non c'è nulla di fisiologico nel downgrade dell'Aeroporto di Salerno" (there is nothing natural about the downgrade of Salerno airport). Gazzetta di Salerno listed possible causes in December 2025 without naming a source: demand below expectations, competition from Naples, airline costs and commercial risk, no stable off-season traffic and the postponed Capodichino works. Transport undersecretary Antonio Iannone told the paper he hoped there would be no withdrawal "passata la fiammata elettorale" (once the electoral flare-up had passed). He named no cause.

None of these statements is a measurement. The airlines' own published reasons are general. easyJet spoke of keeping its most popular routes, and Jet2 of reviewing its flying programme. Any account that states the cause of Salerno's decline as fact runs ahead of the public record. The panel below checks the claims that circulate most.

Incentives and the surcharge

The municipal surcharge, a fixed charge added to departing passengers' tickets, still applied at Salerno in early 2026. After a meeting at the transport ministry on 10 February 2026, ENAC president Pierluigi Di Palma said "per lo scalo di Salerno vi è l'opportunità di invocare la rimozione delle addizionali comunali" (Salerno airport has the opportunity to seek removal of the municipal surcharges). Ten days later Barbieri said GESAC was starting the process to abolish it, a measure he described as already adopted at several Italian airports with fewer than one million passengers a year.

We found no act removing the surcharge at Salerno by 1 November 2026. Cilento Reporter reported in April 2026, citing unions, that Regione Campania was considering the matter for its next budget. The surcharge also still applies at Naples, where no exemption law was found, and Naples grew 7.9% in January–September 2026, as our analysis of surcharge exemptions and airport growth sets out. Nothing in the data shows whether the surcharge affected Salerno's routes.

Local money has gone into promotion. GESAC's July 2026 release on the new general aviation terminal mentions a €2 million allocation by Salerno's chamber of commerce for tourism promotion and co-marketing with airlines in 2026–27. WEtravel reports that three of the four lots, worth up to about €1.5 million, went to easyJet, and stresses that the lots pay for advertising and promotion services. They do not buy flight capacity. The contract terms are not public.

November 2026: Naples closes, Salerno takes part of its traffic

GESAC confirmed on 29 October 2026 that Naples airport is closed to air traffic for the whole of November for a €30 million rebuild of the runway, taxiways and runway lighting, with work running around the clock. Its bus release of 27 October gives the dates as 1 to 30 November 2026. ENAC had moved the works to November, which its president called the period with the least traffic of the year, after a meeting on 1 July 2025.

In GESAC's words, "una parte del traffico aereo" (a part of the air traffic) moves to Salerno. The smaller airport is to serve 15 destinations in November. Six are domestic: Bergamo with Ryanair, Malpensa with easyJet, Linate with Aeroitalia and ITA Airways, and Genoa, Turin and Trieste with Aeroitalia. Nine are international: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Casablanca, Dubai, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, Madrid, Paris and Sharm el-Sheikh. Both Salerno terminals operate, and the general aviation terminal opened in July 2026 handles Casablanca, Dubai, Sharm el-Sheikh and Madrid.

Busitalia Campania runs eight buses a day in each direction between Naples Piazza Garibaldi and Salerno airport for €12 a leg, according to GESAC. Runs to Salerno railway station are increased, the lines to the Amalfi Coast, Potenza, Eboli and Battipaglia continue, and a fixed-fare shared taxi to the central stations of Naples and Salerno is on trial. GESAC's release gives no reopening time for Naples.

Not every Naples route moves. Missionline reported in September 2026 that ITA Airways passengers from Linate could be rebooked via Salerno or Rome Fiumicino. The same report listed Luxair to Luxembourg among Salerno's November routes. GESAC's October list does not include it.

November will lift Salerno's figures, and the comparison will need care. A month in which Salerno handles flights moved from Naples says little about its own market. WEtravel calls the month a significant test of how traffic is handled, and stops short of treating it as a test of the airport's future capacity. Assaeroporti's November 2026 report should be read with the closure in mind, and any year-on-year rise for that month should be labelled as such.

Getting from Salerno airport to the coast

Access is part of the operator's own diagnosis. Barbieri named roads and the light-metro station as the missing pieces. WEtravel reports, citing Italy's rail network operator RFI, that the metro extension to Pontecagnano, about 9 km, is planned in phases from 2027 and due for completion in 2028. Until then the airport relies on buses and taxis.

Missionline gives the Salerno Airlink bus to Salerno railway station at €5 and about 40 minutes. From the station, trains, buses and seasonal ferries continue along the coast. GESAC confirms that the bus line from the airport to the Amalfi Coast continues during November. Our Amalfi Coast travel guide covers the onward connections.

What nobody publishes

Salerno's decline has causes, and the public record does not contain them. No airline has published seats, load factors or route results for Salerno. GESAC's 2026 releases give no Salerno passenger figure, no route-by-route traffic and no incentive terms. Assaeroporti publishes no passengers by airline or by route.

Three datasets would settle most of the argument. Seats offered and seats sold by route and month would show whether the cut routes were empty or merely unprofitable. Passengers by airline would show how much of the domestic rise in 2026 came from Aeroitalia. The terms of any incentive or marketing agreement would show what each airline was paid to fly. None of them is in the public domain, and none of the people quoted in this report has released them.

The origin of Salerno's passengers is unmeasured. So is the share of foreign visitors bound for the Amalfi Coast, and the number of travellers who switched to Naples. The study by Stefano Paleari presented at the terminal opening in July 2026, "Quali prospettive per l'Aeroporto di Salerno", was not found in published form. ENAC's annual traffic data was not found with a Salerno line for 2024 or 2025.

Assaeroporti's own Salerno table carries an error. Its "of which EU" passenger row exceeds total international passengers in 2025, for example 390,997 against 169,287 for January–August, and cannot be used. The domestic, international, transit and general aviation rows add up to the published totals and are used throughout.

Salerno's story is separate from Catania's. Catania's 2026 losses have a documented cause in Etna's ash closures, set out in our report on the Catania airport closures. Salerno's do not, and the two should not be compared as if they did.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers: for most trips to the Amalfi Coast, Naples remains the airport with the most flights, and our Naples travel guide covers getting from Capodichino into the city and on to the ferries. Salerno is closer to the eastern end of the coast and worth checking if a route suits you, but its network has changed every season since 2024, so check the live timetable before you build a trip around it. In November 2026 Naples is closed from the 1st to the 30th. Check which airport your flight now uses, allow time for the €12 Busitalia bus between Naples Piazza Garibaldi and Salerno airport, and see our Sorrento travel guide if you are staying on the Naples side of the peninsula.

Businesses and investors: Salerno's 2025 total of 380,606 passengers was 2.9% of Naples', and by January–August 2026 its share of the two airports had fallen to 1.7%. The binding constraints named by the operator are access and route economics, and neither has a published metric. Anyone underwriting Salerno-dependent tourism should treat the November 2026 traffic as a diversion effect, watch whether the easyJet routes Barbieri announced and Wizz Air's 2027 routes go on sale, and track whether the municipal surcharge is removed. A return of international passengers towards 2025 levels, about 170,000 in January–August, would change the assessment. Domestic traffic, despite Aeroitalia's new routes, was still down 21.4% over those eight months. Naples' own visitor numbers are in our Naples tourism statistics.

Journalists and analysts: the figures safe to cite are in the "which number to cite" box earlier in this article, all from Assaeroporti except the 370,000 first-year count from ENAC and GESAC, and November 2025 is the month to date the decline from. Do not repeat a −32.4% first half, a −50% November or "flights moved to Salerno" for the Naples closure, and do not write any cause as fact. Never mix the ENAC and Assaeroporti series. The series finding holds. Where an Italian airport's traffic swings, the official data shows how much and when, and nobody publishes the route-level data that would show why.