Milan Bergamo Airport has sights on Dakar, Senegal (with Blue Panorama) and its growing route network

Milan Bergamo Airport continues to resume flights to many popular destinations while also adding numerous new routes to its growing network to meet the demand from travellers. Though the global pandemic has caused a worldwide reduction in passenger numbers, the Italian airport has begun to see a positive trend in the return of its regular schedule while also celebrating the announcement of several new links from the Lombardy gateway.

Witnessing a significant development for Milan Bergamo, the airport has confirmed Blue Panorama will launch a twice-weekly operation to Dakar from 23 October 2020. Already set to increase to three times weekly from mid-December, the link to Senegal’s capital city will become Milan Bergamo’s longest route and first destination in West Africa – boosting the airport’s growing range of African routes as the latest flights join those to Morocco and Egypt.

Commenting on the new service, Giacomo Cattaneo, Director of Commercial Aviation, SACBO says: “Last year there were more than 120,000 direct and indirect passengers between the Milan market and Dakar, so we are extremely happy Blue Panorama have realised the significant demand in the market. The area around the stunning city of Bergamo has one of the largest Senegalese communities in Italy and, with the airline being recently awarded the traffic rights to serve Senegal from the Italian CAA, we look forward to working with them during what will no doubt be a successful future.”

In addition, Milan Bergamo will launch new flights to Saint Petersburg from 15 October. Recognising a good-sized Milan market of close to 135,000 direct and indirect passengers last year, Wizz Air will initially commence a four times weekly service – increasing to daily in December – to Lombardy’s second Russian destination, joining Pobeda’s link to Vnukovo.

With a large and growing range of airlines – increasingly seeing more full-service carriers – Milan Bergamo welcomed its latest new carrier last month as Air Albania joined the airport’s roll call. Launching its four times weekly service to Tirana, the flag carrier joins Blue Panorama and Wizz Air on the popular link to the Albanian capital city.

While Air Arabia Maroc restarted links to Casablanca in mid-July – one of the specifically designated airlines permitted to fly by the Moroccan Government – its sister airline, Air Arabia Egypt, added Borg El Arab, in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, to its network from the Lombardy region having also restarted services to Cairo last month.

Adding to the continued resumption of Milan Bergamo’s schedule, Pegasus Airlines began to once again serve Sahiba Gökçen this month – the Turkish airline having passed 200,000 passengers on this city-pair last year – while, Albastar has reinstated essential weekend connections to its broad network in Southern Italy.

“It’s rewarding to see that, while it’s been a difficult year for all within aviation, we continue to ensure our efforts are directed to providing the best network Milan Bergamo can offer its customers,” adds Cattaneo. “Notwithstanding the pandemic, we are also progressing our infrastructure work. Having completed the extra-Schengen departures area, we are now preparing the brand-new extra-Schengen arrivals area which is expected to be ready before the end of September. To ensure we meet the demands of capacity, as well as keeping all our passengers safe, we’ve also begun the extension of the Schengen departures and arrivals area which are expected to be finished S21 in time for the rescheduled World Routes event which will take place in Milan.”