Air-side view of the airport

Bari "Karol Wojtyła" Airport (Italian: Aeroporto di Bari) (IATA: BRI, ICAO: LIBD) is an airport serving the city of Bari in Italy. It is approximately 8 km (5 miles) northwest from the town centre. The airport is also known as Palese Airport (Italian: Aeroporto di Palese) after a nearby neighbourhood.

The airport's facilities were upgraded in 2005-2006 with the opening of a new passenger terminal equipped with 4 loading bridges, a new control tower and a multistorey car park.

The airport handled 2,825,456 passengers in 2009.

History

The airport of Bari was originally a military airfield, built in the 1930s by the Regia Aeronautica. During the World War II Italian Campaign it was seized by the British Eighth Army in late September 1943 and turned into an Allied military airfield. Until the end of the war in May 1945, it was used by the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces Twelfth and Fifteenth Air Forces both as an operational airfield as well as a command and control base. In addition the airfield was used by the Italian Co-Belligerent Air Force (Aviazione Cobelligerante Italiana, or ACI), or Air Force of the South (Aeronautica del Sud). After the war it was turned over to the post-war Air Force of the Italian Republic (Aeronautica Militare Italiana).

In the 1960s it was opened to civil flights and Alitalia schedules regular flights to Rome, Catania, Palermo, Ancona, Venice. The routes were later taken over by ATI, using a Fokker F27 airplane. When ATI put into operation the new DC-9-30 it became necessary to create a new runway, while the military complex was still used as passenger terminal.

In 1981 a new building was completed, originally intended to be used as cargo terminal, but it became in fact the airport’s new passengers terminal. In 1990, with the Football World Cup, the runway was extended and the terminal was upgraded, going through a further renovation in 2000.

However, the traffic increase showed the infrastructural limitations of the airport and in 2002 the founding stone of the new passenger terminal was laid out. At the same time, flight infrastructures (aircraft parking areas, runway etc.) were upgraded. In 2005, the new terminal was completed and opened to passengers.

In 2005, construction works for a new control tower began and they were completed the following year. In 2006 a further extension of the runway was begun, and in 2007 the planning of an extension of the passenger terminals was commissioned.

Airlines and destinations

Accidents and incidents

• On 6 August 2005, Tuninter Flight 1153, a Tuninter ATR 72 en route from Bari to Djerba, Tunisia, ditched into the Mediterranean Sea about 18 miles from the city of Palermo. Sixteen of the 39 people on board died. The accident resulted from engine fuel starvation due to the installation of ATR 42 fuel quantity indicators in the ATR 72.

The content above was published at Airports-Worldwide.com in 2010.
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