Flights to Italy from the USA in 2026: Six New Nonstop Routes Confirmed, and Traffic Data That Doesn't Line Up

Six new nonstops are confirmed for summer 2026, and Seattle-Rome has two airlines

We checked every US-Italy route announced for summer 2026 against the airline's own newsroom or the airport operator. Six new routes passed. Alaska Airlines launched daily Seattle-Rome flights on 28 April 2026 on a Boeing 787, according to the airline's press kit. The service is seasonal and runs to 23 October. Delta followed on the same route. Its newsroom listed Seattle-Rome as launching on 6 May 2026. The Port of Seattle reported on 8 May that Delta's flights had started that week, four times a week on an Airbus A330-900.

That makes Seattle-Rome the only new route with two carriers. Delta announced its Seattle-Rome service in June 2025, Airlinegeeks reported on 24 June 2025, with an A330-900 offering Delta One and Premium Select cabins. Delta listed the route again in a November 2025 summary of its summer 2026 transatlantic schedule. Some route lists published in 2026 credited Seattle-Rome to only one of the two airlines. Both fly it.

JetBlue flew its first route to Italy, Boston to Milan Malpensa, from 11 May 2026. Milan Airports, the Malpensa operator, announced the launch in a release datelined Boston, 11 May 2026. JetBlue said it would fly daily with an Airbus A321 to 5 October. ITA Airways opened Houston to Rome on 1 May 2026. Houston Airports' release of 2 December 2025 set three weekly flights in May and five a week from 1 June to 24 October, on an A330-900. ITA's chief executive called it the first direct flight between the two cities.

Two routes link the US with southern Italy and Sardinia. United's Newark to Bari service runs four times a week on a Boeing 767-300ER, from 1 May to 7 September eastbound, according to the schedule United announced in October 2025 and Affaritaliani reported. United called it its first service between Bari and the US. Italiavola reported on 2 May 2026 that the first flight had arrived in Bari. Delta's New York JFK to Olbia route, in Sardinia, was listed by Delta as launching on 20 May 2026. Trade outlet Flymag reported on 21 May that it had begun, four times a week on a 767-300ER.

Some launch details remain secondary. The first Houston, Bari and Olbia flights are confirmed by trade outlets (Qualitytravel.it, Italiavola and Flymag), not by the airlines or airports. Season end dates for Delta's Seattle and Olbia routes were not verified. Claims that ITA's Houston service and Delta's Olbia service are the first of their kind rest on the companies' own statements.

One route returned, one was suspended, and nobody counts the total

American Airlines' daily Miami to Milan Malpensa flights started on 30 March 2026, according to a Milan Airports notice. Some lists of 2026 routes counted it as new. Qualitytravel.it reported on the launch day that American had flown the route between 2016 and 2020, so it is a return. The Milan Airports notice describes it as a summer 2026 service. The Local had reported in January 2026 that it would run all year.

Delta also brought back its seasonal JFK to Catania route in April 2026, its newsroom said. Catania's airport itself closed several times in 2026 because of Etna eruptions, as our report on Etna and Catania airport closures records. American extended its Chicago and Miami flights to Rome to 1 November and added a second daily Philadelphia-Rome flight from 5 to 24 October, Qualitytravel.it reported on 27 June. The same report said American would operate up to seven daily flights between Rome and the US at peak. Those are schedule changes on existing routes, and the figures come from the airline and ADR as relayed by the trade press.

Neos, the Italian leisure airline, went the other way. CAPA, an aviation research service, reported in background to a March 2026 item that Neos would suspend Bari to New York JFK for summer 2026. CAPA said the airline cited geopolitical uncertainty, Atlantic market conditions and overcapacity that weakened demand. A February 2026 Qualitytravel.it article had still listed Neos flying Bari-JFK twice a week. CAPA also reported Neos resuming Milan Malpensa-JFK from 19 March 2026 and Palermo-JFK from 3 June. A CAPA headline of 27 May said Neos would resume both routes in summer 2027. We could not read the full item and did not verify what Neos operated through the summer.

Put together, the 2026 network gained six new routes and one returning route and lost at least one. That tally is ours. ENAC, Assaeroporti, the airport operators and the US government publish no count of US-Italy nonstop routes by season. We found no OAG or Cirium count in open sources. Any article that states a precise number of routes "up on 2025" is giving its own count or a commercial one.

Aeroporti di Roma, which runs Fiumicino, gave one network figure. Its chief executive Marco Troncone said in May 2026 that the Houston route brought the number of North American airports linked to Fiumicino in summer 2026 to 22, Qualitytravel.it reported. That is a company statement about destinations served. It says nothing about seats or passengers.

The 601,000 figure counts one direction and one nationality

The only official US-side figure for 2026 comes from the National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO), part of the US International Trade Administration. Its Survey of International Air Travelers counted 601,000 departures by US residents to Italy in January to March 2026. Italy tied with France for fourth place among overseas destinations, behind the UK, the Dominican Republic and Japan.

The figure has a narrow scope. It is a survey estimate. It covers US residents only, flying out of the US. It is not a count of passengers in both directions, of seats or of Italians flying home. Doubling it does not produce a two-way total. NTTO's page does not say whether a traveller visiting several countries is counted under each one.

NTTO's first-quarter 2025 page gave Italy 562,000. The change to 601,000 is about 6.9% by our calculation. NTTO did not publish that percentage, and both figures are rounded survey estimates. The 2025 page also carries a heading that names a different quarter, which we could not resolve. Total US overseas departures rose 2.6% in the same quarter, on NTTO's own figure.

Rankings in this survey move with small changes. In the first quarter of 2025 Italy was fifth, behind the UK at 949,000, the Dominican Republic, Japan and France at 679,000. A year later France had dropped to 601,000 and Italy had risen to the same figure. Rounded survey estimates this close together say little about rank. They show that Italy and France drew similar numbers of US residents in the first quarter of 2026.

The first quarter is Italy's weakest season in this series. NTTO counted 1.7 million US residents travelling to Italy in the third quarter of 2025, second only to the UK. For the whole of 2024 it counted 4.2 million, again second to the UK. No full-year 2025 figure and no 2026 figure after March had been published when we checked on 2 November 2026.

NTTO's monthly passenger data, drawn from flight manifests, show no Italy row. For July 2026 they show 8.5 million passengers between the US and Europe in both directions, down 2.6% on July 2025. Country detail is available only in paid reports, NTTO says, so the free data cannot show whether Italy followed the European trend.

Italy's regulator counts over 6 million US passengers, and the trunk routes shrank

ENAC's annual traffic report counts passengers differently. Its figures cover arriving and departing passengers at Italian airports on scheduled and charter flights, excluding direct transit. A return trip counts twice, and Italians, Americans and travellers of other nationalities all count. On that basis Italian airports handled more than 6 million passengers on US routes in 2025, up 10.6%. The US made up 83.6% of North American traffic, and North America totalled 7.2 million.

ENAC's figure and NTTO's figure measure different things. One is two-way airport traffic of every nationality over a calendar year. The other is a survey of US residents leaving the US in one quarter. Setting 601,000 against 6 million, or dividing one by the other, produces a number with no meaning.

Within ENAC's total, the busiest routes fell. Rome-JFK carried 1,090,714 passengers in 2025, down 4.5%, and remained Italy's busiest route outside the EU. Milan Malpensa-JFK carried 719,760, down 5.3%, and slipped from fourth to fifth. By our calculation from ENAC's rounded percentages, the two routes together lost roughly 90,000 passengers.

Growth came from elsewhere. ENAC says Fiumicino added more than 200,000 US passengers in 2025, a rise of 6.5%, even as its JFK route shrank. Naples grew 58% to more than 340,000. Palermo rose 119% to about 38,000, from a small base. ENAC does not list which routes drove these changes, and we found no source that explains them. Most of the 2026 additions also avoid the Rome-JFK and Milan-JFK pairs. Nothing in ENAC's report links the two trends.

The US is a large market in a small segment. ENAC counts 58 million passengers on routes outside the EU in 2025, 25% of all traffic at Italian airports, against 99 million on EU routes and 72.4 million domestic. North America, at 7.2 million, is a fraction of the non-EU total. Canada accounted for 1.2 million, down 1.2%. The US figure grew faster than Italy's airports as a whole, which ENAC put at 229.7 million passengers, up about 5%.

ENAC's 2025 report has no version date in its text. The file name marks it version 0.7, published in May 2026. We checked the US paragraph and the route table in the PDF text. Figures may change in a later version.

Airport operators publish no US split, so the 2026 growth figures come from the trade press

For 2026 the picture is thinner. Assaeroporti, the Italian airports association, publishes monthly passenger totals for 41 airports. Its tables split domestic from international traffic and show the EU share, with no breakdown for North America or the US. For January to September 2026 it reported 187.1 million passengers across Italy, up 5.5%, with international traffic up 6.6%.

Fiumicino, the main US gateway, grew 1.1% to 39,688,456 passengers over the nine months. Malpensa grew 0.9% to 24,087,446. Palermo grew 15.1%, Venice 9.9% and Naples 7.9%. These are totals for all routes. They cannot show whether US traffic grew faster or slower than the airport as a whole.

The two intercontinental hubs carried about a third of Italy's passengers in those nine months and a small share of the growth. By our approximate calculation from Assaeroporti's rounded percentages, Fiumicino and Malpensa together added about 0.6 million passengers, out of a national gain of about 9.8 million. The new US routes started in the same months. By our rough estimate, a route of four weekly widebody flights over one summer adds a few tens of thousands of seats in each direction. That is small against an airport handling 40 million passengers in nine months. Airport totals are too coarse to show the effect of any single route.

The figure most often quoted for US growth has no primary source. On 28 May 2026 Quotidiano di Sicilia, carrying an askanews report, said Fiumicino handled about 810,000 passengers on US routes in January to April 2026, up 10%. The same piece gave first-quarter growth on Malpensa's US routes of 29% for arrivals and 9% for departures. Every number in that article is credited to the trade website businessmobility.travel. We could not open that site's page, and no ADR, ENAC or Assaeroporti release carries the figures.

Aeroporti di Roma's aviation chief Ivan Bassato was quoted on a different number. Qualitytravel.it and Italiavola reported on 27 June 2026, at an event marking 30 years of American Airlines in Rome, that he cited a 10% rise in North American traffic in the first five months of 2026. That covers Canada as well as the US, runs to May and comes from a quote relayed by the trade press. We found no ADR release with the figure. The two 10% figures should not be merged into one finding.

We also tested a claim that US-Italy seat capacity rose 28% year on year. It appeared on nomadlawyer.org on 29 March 2026, attributed to unnamed industry data, beside a booking figure and a spending forecast with no sources. We found no official or company source for any of them, and we do not use them.

Some outside pressures on capacity are documented. NPR reported on 23 April 2026 that jet fuel prices had roughly doubled since the war involving Iran began, and that Lufthansa was cutting 20,000 short-haul flights. NPR did not mention transatlantic or Italy flights. We found no primary source linking fuel costs to US-Italy schedules in 2026.

Demand data show what Americans spend in Italy and say nothing about routes

The Bank of Italy's international tourism survey gives the demand side for 2025. It counted 4.1 million trips to Italy by US residents, the same rounded figure as in 2023 and 2024. The Bank defines these as crossings of the Italian border, so the count includes same-day visits and counts repeat visitors more than once. Of those trips, 3.6 million involved at least one night, up from 3.2 million in 2024.

US visitors spent €6,605 million in Italy in 2025, up 3.0%, second only to Germany. The average overnight trip lasted 10.2 nights. Spending per night was €178.1, down from €191.1 in 2024. The survey counts visitors at the border by any means of transport, so it is not an air passenger count.

The US weighs more in spending than in numbers. It supplied 4.4% of foreign trips to Italy in 2025 and 11.6% of foreign spending, the Bank's tables show. Americans also stay longer than most visitors. The average foreign overnight trip lasted 6.4 nights, against 10.2 for Americans. The survey does not record which airport or airline a visitor used, so it cannot attribute any of that spending to a route.

Registered accommodation gives a third view. Eurostat, using data supplied by ISTAT, logged 28,781,029 nights by US residents in registered tourist accommodation in Italy in 2025, covering hotels, holiday rentals and campsites, and 9,552,802 arrivals. The 2025 figure includes private non-business rentals for the first time, according to ISTAT, so it cannot be compared with 2024. On the older basis, US nights rose from 16,302,928 in 2019 to 23,744,949 in 2024, an increase of about 46% by our calculation.

None of these series can be added to ENAC or NTTO figures. Bank of Italy trips, Eurostat check-ins, NTTO departures and ENAC airport passengers each count a different event. The same problem affects Italy's place in Europe, which changes with the count used, as our Italy and Spain comparison shows. Our American tourists in Italy analysis sets out the three visitor counts in detail. For 2026 none of the Italian demand series has a US row yet, as our 2026 tourism record watch tracks month by month.

Carrier ownership is changing in the same market. ITA Airways, which flies Houston and other US routes from Rome, is moving under Lufthansa control. Our report on the Lufthansa and ITA Airways deal explains the status of that transaction and why its effect on fares is unmeasured.

Claims that fail when checked

We checked the most widely shared figures and route claims about US-Italy flights in 2026 against primary sources. The panel below lists the outlets, dates and verdicts. Two patterns recur. Growth percentages from a single trade website travel through news agencies without a link to any airport data. The Fiumicino 10% moved from a trade site into an askanews report, which Quotidiano di Sicilia carried with the trade site still credited. Route lists published early in the year carry dates and status that later changed.

The figure is also easy to misread. The Fiumicino 10% counts passengers in both directions on US routes, of every nationality, so it is not a measure of American visitors. ADR's 10% for North America adds Canada and a fifth month. Neither is a published airport statistic.

What this means for travellers, businesses and analysts

Travellers have more nonstop choices from the US to Italy than in 2025, and more of them avoid New York. Seattle has two airlines flying to Rome in summer, and Houston, Boston, Newark-Bari and JFK-Olbia are new. Most of these routes are seasonal, with announced end dates between early September and late October. Check the airline's own schedule before planning around a route, because several start dates and season lengths in news lists differ from what the airlines published. Our EES border guide covers the entry checks at Italian airports.

Tourism businesses and investors have route evidence for 2026 and little traffic evidence. The new routes are real, and ENAC shows US traffic growing outside the JFK routes in 2025. For 2026 there is one quarter of NTTO survey data, an ADR quote on North America and airport totals that grew 1.1% at Fiumicino and 0.9% at Malpensa. Neos, as reported by CAPA, cited overcapacity and weaker demand when it suspended its Bari-JFK route for the summer. Planning on a percentage for US growth in 2026 means relying on a figure that no official body has published.

Journalists and analysts should name the series behind any US-Italy figure. NTTO's 601,000 is a one-way survey of US residents. ENAC's 6 million is two-way airport traffic of all nationalities. The Fiumicino 10% for January to April has no primary source, and ADR's 10% covers North America to May. No official count of routes exists. If ENAC keeps this year's timing, its 2026 report will appear around May 2027. It will be the first official test of whether the new routes added US traffic.