Brescia Airport

Brescia "Gabriele D'Annunzio" Airport^[a] (IATA: VBS, ICAO: LIPO), also known as Montichiari Airport, is located in Montichiari, southeast of City of Brescia, Italy. Other nearby airports are Milan-Malpensa, Milan-Linate, Bergamo Orio al Serio and Verona-Villafranca.

Brescia Airport "Gabriele D'Annunzio" Aeroporto di Brescia
IATA: VBS ICAO: LIPO
Summary
Airport type	Public
Serves	Brescia, Italy
Location	Montichiari, Lombardy
Hub for	Poste Air Cargo
Built	September 1909; 115 years ago (1909-09)
Elevation AMSL	356 ft / 109 m
Coordinates	45°25′44″N 010°19′50″E
Website	www.aeroportobrescia.it
Map
VBS Location of airport on map of Lombardy Location of Lombardy region in Italy
Runways
Direction Length Surface m ft 14/32 2,990 9,810 Asphalt
Statistics (2022)
Passengers 7,245 Passenger change 21-22 32.8% Movements 13,224 Movements change 21-22 7.2% Cargo tons 38,947 Cargo tons change 21-22 -1.7%
Sources:DAFIF[1] Statistics from Assaeroporti [2]

History

The airport is on the site of Italy's first air race meeting in September 1909, and the first outside France.^[3] The meeting was attended by the aviators Louis Blériot and Glenn Curtiss, among others. Gabriele D'Annunzio flew in one of Curtiss's planes and drew on the experience of the meeting in his novel Forse che sì forse che no (1910). Franz Kafka and Max Brod also attended and separately published accounts.

Ryanair operated scheduled flights to and from London Stansted Airport and Cagliari-Elmas Airport until the end of October 2010, when the airline decided to move these flights to the nearby Verona-Villafranca Airport.

Passenger traffic has collapsed from strong year on year growth in 2007–2008, from almost 35,000 passengers a month in June 2008 ^[4] to only 311 passengers in June 2013, a drop of 99% over 5 years.^[5]

Brescia Airport is the main sorting base for Poste Italiane's air mail: DHL and Poste Air Cargo postal and cargo flights depart and arrive every night.^[6][7]

The airport also benefits from an intensification of freight traffic, thanks to a partnership agreement signed between the Poste Italiane and Amazon.^[8] The cargo trend has seen a further increase since March 2017 with the start of the activities of SW Italia and Silk Way West Airlines, which operate weekly flights between Brescia, Baku and Hong Kong.^[9] Since November 2018, the airport has also become one of the main base for cargo flights of the international courier DHL.^[10]

Airlines and destinations

Passenger

There haven't been scheduled passenger services at the airport since July 2018.^{[citation needed]}

Cargo

Airlines	Destinations
Poste Air Cargo	Rome-Fiumicino[11]

Statistics

Annual passenger traffic at VBS airport. See Wikidata query.

Ground transportation

On 20 May 2016, APAM (Transport for Mantova) began operation of a twice-weekly shuttle bus service between Brescia-Montichiari Airport to Brescia Santa Eufemia metro station, for onward connections to Brescia railway station.^[12] The bus journey takes 20 minutes and operates only on Mondays and Fridays.

Notes

1. Italian: Aeroporto di Brescia