Venice Lido Airport
| Venice-Lido Airport “Giovanni Nicelli” |
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| Characteristics | |||
| ICAO code | LIPV | ||
| Coordinates | |||
| Height above MSL | 4 m (13 ft ) | ||
| Transport links | |||
| Distance from the city center | 3 km east of Venice city center | ||
| Local transport | Water bus | ||
| Basic data | |||
| opening | 1915 | ||
| operator | ENAC; Venice Aeroclub | ||
| Start-and runway | |||
| 05/23 | 994 m × 45 m grass | ||
The Venice-Lido airport ( it .: Aeroporto di Venezia-Lido “Giovanni Nicelli” , formerly also called Aeroporto di Venezia San Nicolò ) is located in the northern Italian region of Veneto , around three kilometers east of the city center of Venice , on the Lido di Venezia . The airport is used by the Venice Aeroclub and by General Aviation . From 1926 to 1953 it was Venice's commercial airport .
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Infrastructure
The airport, located directly at the main entrance to the Venice lagoon , can only be reached by public transport by water. In the southwest of the airfield there is a landing stage for motor boats near the terminal building . The airfield has a grass runway almost a kilometer long .
history
The airfield was built in 1915 as a military airfield . After the First World War it was named after the fighter pilot Giovanni Nicelli. In the 1920s, commercial air traffic in Italy was mainly handled with flying boats , for which special handling facilities were set up on the neighboring island of Vignole (also Sant'Andrea ). In 1926 the civilian use of the conventional airfield San Nicolò on the Lido was also allowed, especially for the airline Transadriatica , which offered scheduled flights to Vienna , Graz and Munich , among other things . In the 1930s, the airfield became one of the busiest in Italy. In 1935 a new terminal building was opened. There were also larger aircraft maintenance facilities here , which later became the Officine Aeronavali di Venezia . After renewed military use in the Second World War , commercial air traffic was resumed in 1947 with scheduled flights to Rome . As the airport soon became too small for the new commercial aircraft, the first airlines moved in 1953 to Treviso Airport, which is just under 30 kilometers away on the mainland . A partially bitter discussion began between supporters of the airport on the Lido and those in favor of a new building on the mainland. Since an adequate expansion on the Lido would have been associated with great difficulties, the decision was finally made in favor of the new Venice Marco Polo Airport , which opened in 1960. The Officine Aeronavali , which were later taken over by Alenia Aeronautica , later had to move to the new airport due to lack of space. For almost four decades, the Venice Aeroclub saved the airport from complete ruin. Around the turn of the millennium, a new interest arose in the traditional airfield, which was restored in the years that followed in the style of the former commercial airport.
