Palermo airport's 15.1% surge: Bari, Olbia and Cagliari grew too in 2026, and nobody has measured why

Four airports carried a quarter of Italy's growth

Every passenger figure in this report comes from Assaeroporti unless another source is named. Assaeroporti counts arriving and departing passengers on 41 airports, including direct transit. A return trip counts twice, and a resident flying abroad counts the same as a visitor. ENAC, the civil aviation authority, publishes a separate annual series that excludes direct transit, and the two are never mixed here. Our report on Italy's airports in 2025 sets out both series.

Italy's 41 airports handled 187,124,810 passengers in January–September 2026, up 5.5%. Working back from the rounded percentages, the national gain was about 9.76 million. Palermo's gain of about 1.08 million is 11.1% of it. Bari added about 724,000, or 7.4%. Olbia added about 402,000 and Cagliari about 287,000. Together the four gained about 2.49 million, or 25.6% of the national gain, while holding 12.6% of passengers. These shares are ours and move by about one point either way because of the rounding.

The growth is old as well as new. Against the same nine months of 2019, Bari is up 61.1%, Olbia 52.3% and Palermo 51.0%. Cagliari is up 18.8%, less than the national 25.2%. The four airports held 10.8% of Italy's passengers in January–September 2019 and 12.6% in 2026. On full years, they grew 31.2% from 2019 to 2025 and Italy's airports 19.1%.

The four did not arrive at 2026 the same way. In 2025 Bari grew 9.7% to 7,977,881 and Olbia 7.2% to 4,161,572, so their 2026 rates continue a run of growth. Palermo grew only 3.4% in 2025, and its aircraft movements fell 0.4%. Cagliari grew 1.8%. For Palermo, 2026 is a break from the year before. For Cagliari, a 6.9% rise is a pickup from a slow 2025.

The late summer months carried much of it. In September 2026 Palermo handled 1,227,047 passengers, 282,418 more than a year earlier, which is 19.3% of Italy's September gain from one airport. Bari added 96,012 in September, Olbia 88,315 and Cagliari 48,882. Palermo's September total was 71.0% above September 2019, Olbia's 61.4% and Bari's 59.3%. Cagliari's was 18.7% above.

A wider list shows the same tilt. We grouped 18 airports: Catania, Palermo, Trapani, Comiso and Lampedusa in Sicily; Olbia, Cagliari and Alghero in Sardinia; Bari, Brindisi, Foggia and Taranto-Grottaglie in Puglia; Lamezia Terme, Reggio Calabria and Crotone in Calabria; and Naples, Salerno and Pescara. They carried 29.7% of Italy's passengers in January–September 2026 and about 46.9% of the national gain. Without Catania, which lost about 315,000 passengers after Etna's closures, the other 17 produced about half of it. Assaeroporti's own 2025 summary reported growth of 8.7% for the "South" and 2% for the "Islands", as relayed by Federturismo, but it does not say which airports those groups contain.

Most of the passenger growth was matched by more flights. Movements at the four airports rose about 10.2% and passengers about 11.8%. At Olbia, movements rose 11.4% and passengers 11.0%, so fuller or larger aircraft added nothing to the rate. At Palermo movements rose 12.9% against 15.1% for passengers, and at Bari 8.0% against 11.8%. In both, more flights match most of the increase and more passengers per flight the rest. Seats and load factors are not published, so that remainder cannot be split further.

Relative to population, Sardinia stands out. Per resident of their region, Sardinia's three airports handled 6.5 passengers over the nine months, Sicily's five 4.0 and Puglia's four 2.6, against 3.17 for Italy, using ISTAT's provisional populations for 1 January 2026 as published by Tuttitalia. These ratios count airport passengers, not visitors, and they double-count every round trip.

Olbia shows how seasonal the growth is. By the end of September it had already handled 97.4% of its full-year 2025 total, leaving it 108,949 short with three months to go. It carried 930,540 passengers in August alone, against Cagliari's 716,886, even though Cagliari is the larger airport over nine months.

Where anyone splits the traffic, the growth is mostly international or foreign

Assaeroporti's monthly tables on its statistics page give totals by airport. The domestic and international detail comes from operators and regions, which publish it on their own schedules and their own definitions. They measure different things. Bari's operator splits passengers by type of flight, and the Region of Sardinia splits them by nationality. Both point the same way.

Bari has the clearest split. Aeroporti di Puglia, the operator, reported 4,964,218 passengers at Bari in January–July 2026, up 11.7%, according to ANSA. International passengers rose 20.5% to 2,922,173. Domestic passengers rose 1.6%. On our approximate arithmetic, international traffic accounts for about 94% of Bari's gain over those seven months, counting the gain split by route type. In September the operator reported 567,624 international passengers at Bari, up 17%, which is 64.2% of its 883,696 total. Brindisi's international passengers rose 23.6% in January–July, to 634,827. Our Puglia travel guide covers how the two airports divide the region.

Sardinia's figures come from the Region. Franco Cuccureddu, the regional tourism councillor, released airport data for January–August 2026, reported by ANSA on 22 September. Passengers at the three airports rose 8.93%. Foreign passengers rose 19.09% and Italian passengers 3.07%. At Alghero, foreign passengers rose 52.56% and Italians fell 4.86%. At Olbia foreign passengers rose 15.55% and at Cagliari 12.11%. The release gives no absolute counts by airport and does not name the dataset behind them.

The Region's 2025 figures show how different the three airports are. On the transport councillor's figures, international passengers made up 48.7% of Olbia's traffic in 2025, against 27.7% at Cagliari and 29.0% at Alghero. These totals come from a different series from Assaeroporti's and do not match it exactly. Our Sardinia tourism statistics report covers the overnight side of the same visitors.

Palermo publishes the least. GESAP's 2025 accounts, approved in July 2026 and reported by Milano Finanza, record international passengers up 11.54%. GESAP put international traffic at about 34% of the 2025 total in a note relayed by Assaeroporti. For summer 2026 its schedule offered 3,625,766 international seats, up 22%, and just over 5 million domestic seats, up 9.5%. Those are seats on sale. Passengers flown by route type are not published. We found no domestic and international split of Palermo's January–September 2026 passengers.

One split exists nowhere. No airport-level figure divides passengers between EU, non-EU and Schengen flights at any of the four airports. The only such split is national. ENAC put international passengers at 68% of Italy's 2025 total, with 43% on EU routes and 25% on non-EU routes. The share of new passengers who are foreign visitors, as opposed to Italians flying abroad, is not measured at any of the four.

No one has measured why, and the surcharge does not fit

The obvious candidate is the municipal surcharge, a fixed charge of €6.50 or more on each departing passenger. Airports where regions pay the State to lift it grew faster than the national average in January–September 2026, as our analysis of the surcharge exemptions shows, and no one has measured how much of that the exemption caused. None of the four airports in this report had it lifted during January–September 2026.

Palermo still charges it. Sicily's exemption, in force from 1 January 2026, covers only airports with fewer than 5 million passengers in 2024. Trapani, Comiso and Lampedusa qualify, and Palermo and Catania do not. Alessandro Aricò, the regional official responsible, said in April 2025 that abolishing it at Palermo and Catania would cost the regional budget about €80 million a year. Ryanair's release of 21 October 2026 confirms that the surcharge still applies at both airports. Ryanair's own Puglia release of 4 March 2026 said Sicily had abolished the charge, which is true only for the smaller airports.

Puglia has no measure. We found no regional act cutting the surcharge at Bari or Brindisi, and Ryanair's March release appealed to the government and the Region to abolish it there. Bari grew 11.8% while paying it, and Brindisi 10.2%.

Sicily has one other scheme. Since 2023 the Region has paid part of the fare for Sicilian residents flying between the island and other Italian airports, and a notice signed on 29 July 2026 set the discount at 25%, capped at €37.50 a leg. It is a subsidy to residents' tickets, it predates 2026, and no source ties it to this year's growth. The airports that did have the surcharge lifted from January 2026 grew fast too: Trapani rose 32.7% and Comiso 286.1%, though both also took flights diverted from Catania, and their growth has no measured cause either.

Sardinia's cut comes after the period. The Regional Council approved on 10 August 2026 a suspension of the charge at Cagliari, Olbia and Alghero from November to March in 2026, 2027 and 2028, starting on 1 November 2026, at a cost of €18.2 million over three years, according to L'Adige and ANSA. Il Sole 24 Ore described the measure on 13 August as still under consideration. Either way, it cannot explain growth between January and September. Ryanair said on 21 October that the suspension came too late for its winter 2026 schedule, and it has announced cuts of 50% at Olbia and 15% at Alghero for winter 2026–27.

What the airlines and operators do publish is capacity. At Palermo, GESAP's summer 2026 schedule listed 105 destinations, 37 airlines and 47,914 flights, up 12%, with 8,682,744 seats, up 14%. Jet2, Wizz Air and KM Malta were new. Wizz Air opened a base at Palermo on 1 August 2026 with two Airbus A321neo aircraft and ten routes, and said it expected to offer almost one million seats there in 2026, more than 200% up on its previous capacity. Ryanair, which had four aircraft based at Palermo, is adding a fifth for winter 2026–27.

At Bari and Brindisi, Wizz Air said it would offer more than 797,000 seats at Bari in summer 2026, up 15%, and claims a 12.1% share of Bari's traffic. Ryanair said in March that it had five aircraft based in Puglia, three at Bari, and announced three new Bari routes. In Sardinia, Wizz Air said it would offer about 440,000 seats in the north of the island in summer 2026, up 108%, but only 128,000 at Olbia, up 4%. Ryanair said in February that it expected Sardinian traffic in summer 2026 to be flat. At Cagliari, Sogaer, the operator, reported more than 5 million summer seats, up 11%, with large increases from Aeroitalia, Lufthansa Group airlines, easyJet and Air France–KLM, according to L'Unione Sarda.

These statements are company claims about seats and plans. None of them is a count of passengers by airline. Assaeroporti publishes no such count, and no operator has released one. The Region of Sardinia runs an aid scheme for new routes, approved by the European Commission in June 2024, and appointed an official to manage the 2026 awards in July 2026. The amounts and their effect on traffic are not published. The routes named in the July 2026 act are easyJet, Volotea and Aeroitalia routes, and three Wizz Air routes are listed as excluded.

Infrastructure does not explain it either. We found no new terminal opened at any of the four airports in 2026. GESAP describes an industrial plan worth €252 million, and the works delivered so far are lounges, parking and a cargo area. Bari has a planned 12,000 m² terminal extension with an initial budget of €25 million and no firm start date, and its 611 new low-cost parking spaces were reported full in July. Aeroporti di Puglia expects about 8.5 million passengers at Bari by the end of 2026, according to a Corriere della Sera report. That is the operator's expectation, given in July, and not a result.

Etna complicates Palermo. Palermo grew 9.1% in January–July 2026 on our arithmetic. In August it grew 32.3% and in September 29.9%. Both months saw Catania closed by volcanic ash, fully from 12 to 15 August after days of restrictions, and again on 14–15 and 26–28 September, as our report on the Catania closures sets out. August was also the first month of Wizz Air's Palermo base.

GESAP put a number on the diversions. It said Palermo handled 3,672 flights on 7–17 August, of which 710 were additional flights diverted from Catania or rescheduled, and estimated more than 112,000 extra passengers over those eleven days. Palermo's August gain was about 326,000 on our arithmetic. If every one of GESAP's estimated passengers is in Assaeroporti's August count, they would be about a third of that gain, and Palermo's August growth without them would still be about 21%. That calculation rests on a company estimate and an assumption about how it was counted. No September estimate exists.

Bari shows no August jump. On Assaeroporti's figures it grew about 11.8% in January–July, 11.3% in August and 12.1% in September, steady through the year. Palermo's growth was uneven, and the two months in which it jumped are the two months in which both candidate causes began. The comparison isolates neither of them, because the two airports differ in airlines, routes and markets.

Movements tell the same story at Palermo. In August its aircraft movements rose 27.7% and in September 28.8%, close to the passenger rates. Diverted flights and new Wizz Air flights would both show up as extra movements, so this measure cannot split them either.

The figures that do not match

Several of the numbers in circulation conflict, and some of the explanations do not hold. The table below lists what we checked.

Palermo's 2025 total is the clearest case. Assaeroporti's statistics page, re-read on 2 November 2026, gives 9,220,905. The table Italiavola & Travel republished on 4 February 2026 gives 9,220,971. Italy's national totals in the two versions differ by exactly the same 66 passengers, and the 2024 totals differ by exactly Palermo's 232-passenger gap for that year. The difference therefore sits wholly in Palermo's row, which suggests a revision, though neither version says so. GESAP's own accounts give 9,209,510, a figure 11,395 lower, and no source explains the gap.

The operators' and regions' totals do not match Assaeroporti's either. Aeroporti di Puglia reported 9,895,019 passengers across its network in January–September 2026, up 11%. Assaeroporti's rows for Bari, Brindisi, Foggia and Taranto-Grottaglie add up to 9,926,883, which is 31,864 more. For 2025, the Region of Sardinia counted 11,018,433 passengers at Cagliari, Olbia and Alghero on scheduled and charter flights. Assaeroporti's three rows add up to 11,186,498. Neither source explains its definitions in enough detail to reconcile the two, so this report uses the operator and regional figures only for the domestic and international splits they alone provide.

Our own pages carry one of these figures. Our earlier report on the Catania closures quotes Palermo's August 2026 as 1,334,996 and Italy's August total as 25,815,995, from the AVIONEWS republication of Assaeroporti's table. The statistics page now shows 1,334,973 and 25,817,153. The differences do not change any rate.

Some arithmetic helps frame the rest of the year, and none of it is a forecast. To reach GESAP's 10 million target, Palermo needs 1,756,771 passengers from October to December. On a base back-calculated from the published rates, it handled about 2.06 million in those months of 2025. Olbia needs 108,949 more passengers to match its 2025 total.

Sicily as a whole grew more slowly than Palermo. Catania, Palermo, Trapani, Comiso and Lampedusa together gained about 1.34 million passengers in January–September 2026, about 7.5%, because Catania lost about 315,000. Palermo handled more passengers than Catania in both August and September, by 333,561 and 182,923. The official overnight data for the island's visitors run a year behind the airport figures.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers: more flights now reach Palermo, Bari, Olbia and Cagliari than a year ago, and at Bari most of the added passengers flew international routes. Choose the airport by where you are staying. Palermo serves western Sicily and Catania the east, Bari and Brindisi split Puglia, and Sardinia's three airports serve different coasts. Etna can still close Catania at short notice, so travelers to eastern Sicily should know the rail and road links from Palermo, which our Sicily travel guide covers. In winter 2026–27, check timetables at Olbia and Alghero, where Ryanair has announced cuts.

Tourism businesses and investors: the four airports' passenger growth is measured and large, and its causes are not. The growth arrived with more flights, and that capacity was announced by the airlines themselves. It can be withdrawn as quickly as it came, as Ryanair's winter cuts in north Sardinia show. Bari's growth has been steady all year on Assaeroporti's figures, and mostly international where the operator splits it. Palermo's jumped in August and September, when a new base opened and Catania was closed, and its October–December figures will show how much of that holds. Nobody publishes how many of these passengers are foreign visitors. Airport totals include residents and count every round trip twice, so they set an upper limit on visitor arrivals by air and say nothing about how long visitors stay.

Journalists and analysts: cite January–September 2026 Assaeroporti figures, name the airports in every group, and keep the series apart from the operators' and regions' numbers. Do not attribute the growth at these four airports to surcharge cuts, because none was in force during the period. Treat GESAP's 112,000 diverted passengers as an operator estimate, and treat every seat figure as an airline claim. As with our reports on Salerno airport's decline and the Catania closures, the official data show how much each airport grew and when, and nobody publishes the passengers by airline that would show why.