Tuscany’s two principal airports are headed towards an integration and aim to comprehensively exceed 11 million passengers per year. “The conditions are now mature to begin to work towards the concrete creation of the Sistema Aeroportuale Toscano [Tuscan Airport System], whose industrial plan will be designed by the SAT and ADF management with the collaboration of Corporacion America” declared the president of the Italian division of Corporacion America – an Argentinian group that manages more than fifty airports around the world, starting with the one in Buenos Aires and that, due to the public offers on the Borsa di Milano [Milan’s Stock Exchange], has become the primary shareholder of Pisa’s and Florence’s airports.
After a comprehensive investment of 130 million by the South American group to purchase the stock shares, completed in June, the current challenge pertains to integration: a necessary condition in order to meet the guidelines set forth in the Piano Nazionale degli Aeroporti del Ministero dei Trasporti [Transport Ministry’s National Airport Plan], which indicate the Pisa-Florence axis as one of the airport systems to be considered strategic at the national level, as a reference point for central Italy, and that set the development goals for a target of 11-12 million passengers per year. “The plan will have to be able to valorize the potentialities and the industrial vocations of the two airports – added Corporacion America’s number one in Italy, Roberto Naldi – with the end goal of birthing one of the country’s main airport hubs, capable of endowing Tuscany of a top-notch network of national and international connections.”
In all of 2013, the data indicate a traffic of 4.5 million passengers for Pisa’s airport managed by SAT and 2 million passengers for Florence’s airport, managed by ADF: the target for 2028 predicts a broadening of the [traveler] pool to 7 million for the fomer and to 4.5[million] for the latter, so as to bring the Tuscan hub to the same levels as Venice’s and only second to those of Rome and Milan. The plan conceived by Corporacion America is to concentrate the international and low cost flights onto Galileo Galilei, and to develop a vocation for business and high-level tourism from Europe in the Florentine airport. The project will have to be supported by a considerable plan of public and private investments in order to provide the airports with the necessary infrastructures to make the quality jump.
Eudardo Eunekian, an Argentinian businessman of Armenian origins, leads Coroporacion America, which manages more than fifty airports around the world, for a total consumer base estimated at approximately 62 million.
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