Conti: “Pisa airport is the main gateway to Tuscany. It is unacceptable not to consider it strategic”
Therefore, on the basis of objective data demonstrating the obvious inconsistencies contained in the referred draft – which, we recall, is by no means definitive, as the related Plan must be approved by the competent Ministry of Infrastructure – and also following a meeting that the Mayor Michele Conti was recently in Rome with Deputy Minister Edoardo Rixi.
The Municipality has formalized its observations on the aforementioned draft via pec (certified electronic mail), as required by the procedure envisaged by the aforementioned Dicastery and the relative contents were illustrated by the mayor himself.
“Our position” comments Michele Conti “derives from a whole series of contradictions contained in the draft prepared by ENAC in enunciating the criteria with which it established which airports are worthy of being considered of strategic importance, first of all the fact that the proximity of the Galilei airport with the Military airport would represent an obstacle to its development, when instead the opposite is absolutely true, given that over the last few decades, thanks to the help of the 46th Air Brigade, Galilei has been able to grow to become one of the main national airports and international, all in clear contrast to what has been highlighted for Cagliari Airport, where vice versa the presence of the military is considered an added value”.
“I would also like to underline”, continues the Mayor, “that in 2019 the data relating to passenger transit for Pisa reached the figure of 5.5 million users of the airport and, at the end of the health emergency, the reference to 30 last September speaks of a quota for 2022 amounting to approximately 3.5 million passengers and, therefore, largely higher than the Florentine airport of Peretola for which, among other things, in the draft prepared by ENAC the new runway is considered completed when, conversely, the related works have not yet been authorised”.
“Let’s not forget”, insists Conti, “that the Galilei is also equipped with the necessary infrastructures as regards motorway and railway connections – although in this case there is still no high speed – and even the Region itself covers the costs every year of the People Mover, a structure deliberately connecting the railway station to the airport, all situations which place us in the position of not accepting the non-inclusion of Galileo among the airports considered strategic, also due to a possible impact on the facility itself which could see International airlines to reroute their flights to other airports”. “That is why”, concludes the Mayor, “I hope that the Regional President Eugenio Giani and the Mayor of Florence Dario Nardella will also follow our example, sending a similar observation to the Ministry of Infrastructure themselves so that the Association between the airports of Pisa and Florence, certified by the constitution, at the beginning of June 2015, of “Toscana Aeroporti Spa”, as the Galilei airport is and must remain the main gateway to Tuscany, also trusting in the support of fellow Mayors of the Municipalities of the coast who have in Pisa their airport reference point“.