Rome's Fiumicino airport faces growing havoc, discontent

Accidents one after the other at Italy's busiest airport Fiumicino in Rome in recent weeks have caused air traffic disruption, passenger discontent and even a farewell threat by the country's largest airline Alitalia.

A blackout at the airport lasted some 20 minutes on Thursday, which was not enough to affect the air-traffic control towers - so that flights were able to land and take off - but was enough to further exasperate passengers after a fire in a nearby green area blocked Fiumicino for hours a day earlier.

"Tell us what we have to do, we are fed up with all this. Please, call those responsible, we have been in queue since this morning," a furious passenger bound for Palermo, a city in southern Italy, told ANSA news agency. Police forces had to intervene to calm hundreds of people in panic.

"They made us get off the plane, but did not give our luggage back to us, they told us they did not know where it was and that if we left the airport we might not find it again and our ticket would no longer be valid," a mother of two children told Rome-based il Messaggero newspaper.

"We feel like prisoners. We want to go home, our children are crying. How is all this possible?" she insisted after waiting for more that seven hours at the airport with her family. Another woman complained that she was forced to remain in a plane, which was unable to take off due to Wednesday's fire, for nearly two hours along with the other passengers. Some people felt faint.

Italy's State Forestry Corps said on Thursday the fire may have originated from scrapheaps of garbage, both industrial and domestic, in a strongly degraded area not far from the airport. The flames spread with the wind, forcing the airport's authorities to suspend all flights.

"We are investigating the causes, but presently we are not able to tell whether the blaze was unintentional or not," Daniela Piccoli, Director of Civil Protection and Public Aid Department at the State Forestry Corps, told Xinhua. The mayor of Fiumicino town, Esterino Montino, had said he believed the fire to be malicious.

In addition, last week more than 60 Alitalia flights were canceled at the airport because of a strike called by pilots and flight attendants.

The havoc amid the summer vacation travel peak period came as Fiumicino was recovering from a fire in Terminal 3 in May that has caused an estimated damage of 80 million euros (more than 87 million U.S. dollars) to Alitalia, the only airline to have its hub in Fiumicino.

"The problems of Fiumicino come from years and years of inadequate investment and planning and are now structural, we hope there will be less attention to finance and more attention to the market and to passengers needs," Alitalia CEO Silvano Cassano said in a statement.

About 50 percent of the total number of flights in Fiumicino, which had nearly 39 million passengers in 2014, is flown by Alitalia. "But if Fiumicino continues to focus on low cost carriers and mediocre services, Alitalia will be forced to shift its growth elsewhere," Cassano pointed out.

Claudio Albonetti, President of Assoturismo Confesercenti, the tourism branch of business association Confesercenti, warned on Thursday the transport chaos that has characterized this July is likely to have negative repercussions on the tourism sector.

"We need more investment and more attention to infrastructure, especially in air transport, which is vital for tourism," he went on saying. On this front, Italy seems to lag behind its competitors that invest on flights to boost tourism. "Fiumicino airport now seems to be haunted by disasters, accidents and delays that show a very bad postcard of Italy to foreign tourists," Albonetti stressed.

The local press highlighted the Fiumicino havoc in fact was the natural consequence of a dramatic crisis faced by Rome, with its administration engulfed in corruption scandal, debt and the pervasive hand of criminal organizations, which risks casting an indelible shadow on the world-renowned beauty of the Italian capital.