Italy remains the largest affected European country during the ongoing spread of the COVID-19 virus. Many airlines have announced cancellations or reduced frequencies throughout Italy. The largest airline in the market, Ryanair, is suspending all of its flights to and from Italy between March 13 and April 8, according to a statement the ultra-low-cost carrier issued to investors.

We analyzed the ch-aviation capacities module to understand what airlines are most exposed with Italy operations and which are the largest destination markets from Italy.

Based on ch-aviation capacities scheduled for the current week (March 9 to 15, 2020) we see 35.5% of capacity scheduled from Italian airports are for domestic flights.

The market leader by seats scheduled in Italy is Ryanair with more than 0.5 million seats scheduled to depart this week. The Irish airline takes almost one-third of the market capacity with flights from Italian airports. Ryanair is the second-largest carrier at Rome Fiumicino and Milan Malpensa, Italy’s two biggest airports, and it is the dominant airline at the country’s third-largest facility, controlling 88% of weekly seats at Milan Bergamo.

Airline Number of seats Share of seats, %
Ryanair 509.544 32,65%
Alitalia 277.018 17,75%
easyJet Europe 183.788 11,78%
Wizz Air 55.771 3,57%
Vueling Airlines 48.052 3,08%
easyJet 36.749 2,35%
British Airways 32.569 2,09%
Volotea 25.950 1,66%
Air France 25.538 1,64%
Lufthansa 25.108 1,61%

Four countries had more than 100,000 seats scheduled from Italian airports per week.

The leading destination markets are United Kingdom, followed by Spain, Germany and France.

Country Number of seats Share of seats, %
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the) 153.074 15,22%
Spain 142.578 14,18%
Germany 108.322 10,77%
France 102.890 10,23%
Netherlands (the) 46.268 4,60%
Romania 35.232 3,50%
Russian Federation (the) 28.912 2,88%
Belgium 28.766 2,86%
Poland 26.328 2,62%
Portugal 24.176 2,40%

The two largest international airports with the highest capacity of flights to Italy are actually in Spain – Madrid Barajas and Barcelona El Prat.

Airport Number of seats Share of seats, %
Madrid Barajas (MAD) 50.663 5,04%
Barcelona El Prat (BCN) 44.991 4,47%
London Gatwick (LGW) 44.428 4,42%
Paris CDG (CDG) 43.178 4,29%
Amsterdam Schiphol (AMS) 40.111 3,99%
London Stansted (STN) 38.667 3,85%
London Heathrow (LHR) 25.293 2,52%
Munich (MUC) 24.096 2,40%
Paris Orly (ORY) 23.669 2,35%
Frankfurt Int’l (FRA) 22.760 2,26%

Data from the the ch-aviation capacities module