FCO: Italy-Wide Air Traffic Data Failure Halves Capacity, Nearly 200 Flights Cancelled

ROME, Italy, October 17, 2026 — A failure in the national data network behind Italy’s air traffic control cut airspace capacity roughly in half for much of Friday, October 16. Rome Fiumicino (FCO) took the most cancellations, and close to 200 flights were cancelled across the country before air navigation provider ENAV restored full capacity in the afternoon.

What happened

The fault: Anomalies appeared overnight in the data transmission network that links Italy’s air traffic control services. ENAV said its own instruments were working and ruled out hacking or sabotage; it said the anomalies were not linked to “malicious activity.” Telecom provider TIM, which runs the network, worked with ENAV on the fix.
Timeline (local time, October 16): Normal operations until about 06:00, when ENAV halted or sharply restricted traffic. Capacity sat near 50% through the morning, climbed to about 75% around 13:30 on a satellite backup network, and was back to 100% by about 15:30, according to Sky TG24.
Cancellations: Cirium counted 192 cancellations around midday, and only 31% of departures from Italian airports had left on time at that point, Qualitytravel reports. ENAV said it gave priority to as many departures as possible, including intercontinental flights.
Knock-on delays: Delays continued after the fix because aircraft and crews were out of position.
Strike overlap: A separate 24-hour easyJet strike was also scheduled in Italy on October 16, so some cancellations may have been strike-related rather than caused by the outage.

Airports affected

Region	Airports	Reported cancellations
Lazio	Rome Fiumicino	Up to 12 in the morning (most affected)
Lombardy	Milan Malpensa, Milan Linate, Bergamo	TBA
Campania	Naples, Salerno	Naples 9 departures, 8 arrivals (capacity cut from 28 to 14 movements an hour); Salerno 1 each way
Puglia	Bari, Brindisi	Bari 4 each way; Brindisi 1
Sardinia	Cagliari, Alghero, Olbia	Cagliari 4 each way; Alghero 2 each way; Olbia delays only
Other	Turin, Bologna, Parma, Rimini, Catania, Comiso, Palermo	Delays; some Palermo cancellations

Airport-level figures are partial counts reported by Sky TG24 during the day.

What it means for non-revs

The outage is over, but the backlog is not gone. Passengers from nearly 200 cancelled flights were being reaccommodated into the weekend, so expect tight loads out of Fiumicino, Milan and Naples on October 17–18.
Long-haul got priority. ENAV favored intercontinental departures, which means short-haul domestic and European flights took more of the cuts and are likely to be fuller as passengers are rebooked.
Build in a buffer for Italy connections. A national system failure like this hits every Italian airport at once, so leave extra connection time and have a backup flight in mind when routing through Italy.
Carry on. On days with mass rebooking, checked bags are the first thing to go astray.