I am on a family vacation in central Tuscany. I have been here for a week – perfect flying weather with severe clear (although a bit performance robbing hot in the afternoon).
I haven’t seen a single GA aircraft in the sky all week,. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
How much flying goes on in Italy? And where?
GA scene is reduced to mostly ultra light in Italy – generally speaking – ,as they are using rotax and SP98 instead of the very expensive avgas (>3.2 euro/liter before any crysis).
I have made a training in Roma (Urbe), there are schools here and some GA activity, but I don’t know for hot GA place in Tuscany.
Try going yo Luca airport? there is some flying there some aeroclub but pity the place is pretty dead even on sunny weekends though, I met somone who was doing his walkaround and asked if he is happy for me to join him on his flight? apparently, he does not fly with other humans
PS: there are few gliding & ultralight places in Tuscany, the flights are enjoyable if you don’t care much about how it flies or floats!
IIRC much of Tuscany is the triangle of Pisa, Florence & Grosetto CTRs with specifc VFR routes in and inbetween, so you probably wouldnt see GA unless in the right place anyway.
Italy is packed with ultralight sites, and has a few GA airports too. My experience with the Italian ultralight scene is getting a bit stale, 10+ years old but it was really great at the time, and very active. More attractive than anything else I’ve seen in Europe. I’ve only flown from one paved GA airport in Italy (thanks to @AfricanEagle) but my observation is that they mostly aren’t active to a significant degree.
Even though its not exactly in Toscana, Pavullo nel Frignano (LIDP) struck me as being in an idyllic setting, not too far north, and paved/longer for larger GA aircraft. Nice Italian language airport/club website here
Italy went like Spain. Certified GA collapsed years ago and most flying is ultralights, operating from grass strips. More e.g. here. A more general thread is here.
Why this happened, is a good question. The Spanish collapse was after the big EU money driven building boom collapsed.
If you do a search for Italian airfields in our airport database you get 163 but in addition to that there are known to be around 500 of the ultralight sites which could not be easily integrated without creating multiple layers.
There is this highly recommended german site, maybe deepl.com can help you with the language. Disclaimer: I’ve yet to fly to italy
Tuscany is a region with not very welcoming airports for GA (Pisa, Siena…)
Try Massa Cinquale or Lucca – both should have regular activities.
(And yes, as mentioned lots of aviosuperficie which are much easier to use – regards from Ali Di Classe, 650m of nice short and flat grass; not Tuscany, though)
Perhaps @Nuccio and @africaneagle can update.