Rome Ciampino Airport (CIA)

It's always a good piece of advice to read up about your destination before booking your last minute holidays with your travel agents. An important factor you'd do well to do a little research about would be the state of your destination's airports including its facilities and conditions during the timeframe of your visit. For those of you who are interested in knowing more about Rome's Ciampino, we have compiled a few useful facts about this airport which handles most of Rome's domestic flights and charters.

Ciampino Airport is located 15km/9 miles to the southeast of central Rome. Its official code is CIA, and full airport name is Aeroporto di Roma-Ciampino or Giovan Battista Pastine. The address is Via Appia Nuova 1651, 00040 Roma Ciampino, Italy. It is located close to Rome’s Greater Ring Road (Grande Raccordo Anulare – GRA), which is the circular motorway around the city. Some of the towns and cities of interest include Cerveteri, Frascati, Grottaferrata, Lake Bracciano and Ostia Antica.

Ciampino is Rome’s smaller airport, when compared to the larger Rome Fiumicino (Leonardo da Vinci). When Fiumicino became operational, many of the international air carriers and airline companies at Ciampino moved over to the newer location. This left the airport handling mostly domestic and charter flights.

Even though it is a smaller facility, it is still one of Italy’s busiest and fastest growing airports. For many years traffic was slow due to the decrease in scheduled flights, but recently low-cost carriers like Ryanair and Easyjet have boosted the airports numbers (Passenger traffic increased by 16.75% in 2006 when compared to 2005). 2007 increased by 9.24%, with a total passenger number of 5,402,000. Passenger traffic in 2008 amounted to 4,788,932, a small decrease from 2007. Despite the decrease, the Italian Ministry of Transport is concerned about the noise complaints due to the huge increase in traffic over the last few years (previous traffic used to only be around 2 million passengers per year). It is possible that Rome will soon have its third commercial airport – Rome Viterbo Airport – to take over part of the excess traffic.

Ciampino was established in 1916, which makes it one of the oldest airports that are still operational. It began as a military airbase and was used on a daily basis by many enormous airships. From Ciampino, there was even a famous journey to the North Pole. Until 1960, it was Rome’s main airport, and in 1970, the runways were extended and an additional one was constructed.

In 1974, Rome’s two airports were brought together under the operation of Aeroporti di Roma – ADR S.p.A. ADR was then responsible for the growth and development. Their main shareholders are Germina S.p.A with 95.8%, Local Entities with 3%, and others with 1.2%. Subsidiary companies of the ADR Group include ADR Tel, ADR Advertising, ADR Sviluppo and ADR Engineering. A more recent addition to this group is ADR Assistance, which offers free ground support for disabled or reduced mobility passengers on departure or arrival. ADR holds shares of Lametia Terme and the Genoa airport operating companies.

Ciampino Airport can be said to have four terminals. A separate terminal is dedicated for cargo transportation, while the other three are passenger orientated, with Departures, Arrivals and General Aviation. The terminals have a reasonable selection of facilities including branches of the Banca di Roma, ATMs and currency exchange services provided by Travelex Italia Ltd. There is a VIP lounge with certain business facilities and a room for meetings and conferences. Additional business services are available at the nearby Hotel Palacavicchi.

Other services are a post office, a pharmacy, a First-aid station, lost luggage and property offices and several restaurants and shopping opportunities.

The airport is fully equipped for disabled passengers, having removed all inconvenient architectural barriers for easier movement within the terminals. There is lifting equipment to assist passenger’s board the airplanes and free dedicated parking spaces.

Rome, and Ciampino Airport, offers a Mediterranean climate and is located in the Lazio region. In general, it has a wonderful year-round climate, with hot summers and mild winters most of the rainfall occurs in autumn.

A few of the low-cost airlines that operate are easyJet, Ryanair and Wizz Air. Easyjet flies to destinations such as Bristol, Madrid, Newcastle, Paris-Orly, Geneva and Lyon. Some of Ryanair’s destinations are Dublin, Hahn, Edinburgh, Eindhoven, London-Stansted, Milan-Bergamo, Paris-Beauvais, Valencia and Liverpool. Wizz Air flies to Bucharest-Bäeasa and Katowice.

Passengers can travel to Rome with a variety of bus, taxi or limousine services. As there is no train station at the airport, bus services have routes to all the nearby railway/metro connections.

Below is a sample of routes flight times and Airlines that fly.

Address of Rome Ciampino Airport

Via Appia Nuova 1651,
00040 Roma,
Ciampino
Italy.

Telephone: +39 (0)6 7934 8521

Fax: +39(0)6 6595 5707

Website: www.adr.it/portal/portal/adr/Ciampino/GB_Pastine