Bari Karol Wojtyła Airport

Bari Karol Wojtyła Airport (Aeroporto di Bari-Karol Wojtyła) is an airport serving the city of Bari in Italy. It is approximately 8km northwest from the town centre. The airport is also known as Palese Airport (Aeroporto di Palese) after a nearby neighbourhood. The airport handled 3,958,815 passengers in 2015.HistoryEarly yearsThe 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 postwar 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.