The southern Italian city of Crotone will resume scheduled flight operations after Ryanair (FR, Dublin International) formally confirmed it would resume flights there later this summer season. The Irish LCC's decision to withdraw from Crotone Sant'Anna Airport in November 2016 resulted in the airfield's closure.
However, following talks between airline management and the local municipal government, Ryanair said it would start a daily return service from Crotone to Milan Bergamo starting in June, followed by a 3x weekly service to Pisa which will run from June through to late-August.
"These new routes are only the first in a series of possible connections that could be launched by Ryanair in conjunction with SACAL's new management, which also handles the airports in Lamezia Terme and Reggio di Calabria."
Local government had earlier attempted to use FlyServus (Crotone), a virtual carrier run by Austria's Common Sky (Linz Blue Danube), to resume flights only for the project to fail on weak consumer demand.
Meanwhile, in a separate development also affecting the Italian market, Ryanair said it would not be reopening its base in Trapani in Sicily this summer following its withdrawal of a based aircraft in October last year. The LCC blamed the decision on operator Aeroporto di Trapani's decision to cancel a route promotion plan. As such, Trapani will still see service from each of Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden, Milan Bergamo, Frankfurt Hahn, and Prague Václav Havel this summer albeit using aircraft deployed to other bases.
