🏝️ Emerald Coast Peak Season Holds Flat on a Daily Basis, With a Broad Italian-French-Swiss Clientele
Olbia–Costa Smeralda Airport (LIEO) is running its peak season roughly level with last year. Avi-Go data shows the airport logged 2,890 business jet movements over the 30 days from June 23 to July 22, 2026 (about 96.3 per day); last year's comparison window spanned 31 days at 2,996 movements (about 96.6 per day) — essentially flat on a daily basis (about -0.3%), with the raw -3.5% mostly reflecting the one-day window mismatch. Clientele is heavily dependent on Europe's wealthy circles: among the Top 10 inbound source cities, Milan led with 160 movements, followed closely by Nice with 84, Rome with 80, London with 57, and Geneva with 50. The Top 10 combined for approximately 590 movements, accounting for about 41% of inbound traffic, with domestic Italy along with France and Switzerland forming the core sources. On the operations side, VistaJet led with 224 movements, followed by NetJets Europe with 192, Topjet Executive with 110, and GlobeAir with 90. No single operator dominated, making the market extremely fragmented.
Impact: Clientele concentrates at the country level in Italy, France and Switzerland but is fairly dispersed at the city level — the Top 10 inbound cities account for only about 41%, with nearly 60% of arrivals from beyond them, so single-city swings have limited airport-wide effect; with no dominant operator either, FBOs and operators can hardly lock in clientele through scale, and peak-season competition still comes down to winning individual dispatches.
Recommendation: FBOs targeting major operators such as VistaJet and NetJets Europe should lock in ground handling and slot quotas for the Milan, Nice, and Rome routes ahead of the August peak-season high point; brokers can conduct targeted charter pitches to high-net-worth clients in second-tier cities such as Palma and Cannes from late July into August, capturing incremental share in this fragmented market.