Dear flights in Sicily, the government evaluates the social routes: maneuver amendment

Prices soaring and fears on the part of entrepreneurs and students who fear that they will not be able to return to Sicily for the Christmas holidays. A round-trip Palermo-Rome flight for the next week costs up to 700 euros, almost as much as a Rome-New York flight: it is the effect of the mad surge in airline ticket prices to and from Sicily. A price increase that is creating huge hardships.

The alarm cry launched by business associations for days has been picked up by the government that is studying a measure to be introduced in the budget maneuver to control the now skyrocketing tariffs. It is reasoning, explains the deputy minister for Infrastructure Giancarlo Cancelleri, on the introduction of a social tariff with a government amendment or a parliamentary amendment to the maneuver.

"At the moment we are evaluating whether to apply it to some subjects such as students, the elderly, the disabled and sportsmen or all the residents in Sicily", however within the community rules. With the law, a national fund will be set up to finance reductions for the reduction of ticket costs. "On Tuesday I will meet Minister Paola De Micheli," announces Cancelleri.

A theme that is very close to the many members of parliament elected in Sicily ready to team up in Parliament. Likely that the amendment is already presented in the Senate, the problem is the resources to be placed: it goes from 20 to 100 million euros. We will see. "I hope the problem is solved by Christmas, because the current rates are outrageous, shameful and unacceptable," Cancelleri says, who has already met the ENAC and next week will see Alitalia and Vueling, the company that recently abandoned the trafficking Palermo-Roma.

But to have a solution before Christmas it would be necessary to intervene via decree because the maneuver enters into force by 2020. Meanwhile, the deputy minister of the Sicilian Region, guilty of not having asked for the Palermo and Catania airports to be included among the beneficiaries of territorial continuity, thanks to which the social routes for the flights between Sicily and the islands were authorized minors of Pantelleria and Lampedusa and will soon enter service as well for the airports of Trapani and Comiso (expect the Brussels ok). The response of the Musumeci government was immediate.

"On Monday morning, on the ministry's table, there will be a formal document from the Sicilian Region that will formalize the request for territorial continuity for the airports of Palermo and Catania", replies the Councilor for Transport Marco Falcone. Pending the measures, Ance Sicilia turns to the Antitrust Authority to "initiate an investigation to verify any violations of the rules in the situation created on the main air routes to and from Sicily after the sudden Vueling withdrawal and the soaring rates charged by the only two carriers still operating in Rome and Milan ".

For the association of builders "the sudden expensive-airfares is not so much a problem limited to the Christmas and New Year holidays, but it is actually an estimated damage of 10,000 euros a year for each young Sicilian who studies at the university of Center-North, for every young startupper who has to turn to propose his ideas and look for financiers, for every entrepreneur who cannot plan the departure six months before hunting for the ticket in promotion, for each operator who has already planned huge expenses to participate to missions abroad and that suddenly finds a higher unforeseen cost ".

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