Published on: 17 January 2015  | Last updated: 7 January 2020

On this page:

• Short-haul flights
• Long haul flights
• Onward train connections

Short-haul flights

There are a huge range of short-haul flights to Italy. Way too many to attempt to list. Skyscanner provides a compre­hensive search engine to give you an overview of what’s available.

Low-cost airlines now have the major share of the Italian market - both for domestic and inter­na­tional flights - indeed the adjective ‘low-cost’ has entered the Italian language. The two major airlines flying to Italy are Ryanair (Ryanair destin­a­tions map) and Easyjet (easyjet.com: routemap).

Others include:

• Vueling offer lots of flights between Spain and Italy although most of the direct flights seem to be from its base in Barcelona (vueling.com: where we fly)
• Wizz Air who offer a wide range of flights between Italy and Eastern Europe
• German Wings (eurowings.com: route network)

Carrying your bike on low-cost airlines: prices and regulations

Airline	Price	Weight limit	Information
Easyjet	£35/£45	32kgs	easyjet.com: sports equipment
German Wings	£45	?	eurowings.com: sporting equipment
ryanair	£50/£60	30kilos	ryanair.com: checked baggage regulations
Vueling	45€	32kgs	vueling.com: special luggage
Wizz Air	30€	?	wizzair.com: baggage

Long haul

Rome’s Fiumicino offers the greatest range long-haul direct flights. Wikipedia has a compre­hensive list of airlines operating out of fiumicino and the routes they offer (en.wikipedia: Fiumicino Airport). The airport website has a destin­a­tions page () but unfor­tu­nately there doesn’t seem to be any way to search only for direct flights. 

While Milano’s Malpensa airport offers flights to a range of destin­a­tions including Miami, New York JFK, Newark, Toronto, and Sao Paolo (milanomalpensa-airport.com: destin­a­tions(https://www.milanomalpensa-airport.com/en/flights/destinations)).

It may also be worth consid­ering taking a connecting flight with one of the low-cost airlines. Ryanair and Easyjet carry more inter­na­tional passengers to/from Italy than all of the majors put together. For some reason these don’t show up in the results for the flights search engines - perhaps because they don’t have through-ticketing arrange­ments with the long-haul airlines.

Easyjet offer services to Italy from the inter­na­tional hubs of Geneva, Amsterdam, and Paris CDG. Ryanair tend to operate out of smaller airports which are probably less useful for connecting flights, although they offer a number of flight from Madrid’s Barajas airport. 

There are a huge range of flights from and to the UK but the greatest range of low-cost flights are from London Gatwick and Stansted rather than Heathrow. 

Onward train connections

Most Italian airports offer good onward train connec­tions, to take you to your destination. 

If you have your bike in a bag then the high-speed frecciarossa and Italo services offer a rival to taking an internal flight: (journey times: Roma-Lecce 5:22; Roma-Napoli 1:10: Milano-Roma 2:55, Milano-Venezia 02:35; Roma-Firenze 1:31; Roma-Bologna 2:15).

If you’re travelling with an undis­mantled bike you’ll be looking at the slower regional trains, but couple of hours train journey will still open up a huge range of destin­a­tions, see the Getting around: trains, boats and ferries section for more information.