
Flying to Sicily by plane is a genuinely convenient option, as it minimises travel time whilst offering spectacular views during your descent. The island’s main airports are Palermo and Catania, whilst the secondary hubs of Trapani and Comiso handle significantly fewer passengers and are used primarily by budget airlines.
The geographic distribution of Sicily’s airports is well balanced: Catania airport sits on the eastern coast, Comiso to the south, and Palermo and Trapani to the west. This means that flying also makes it convenient to tour Sicily by arriving in one area and departing from another. Once you’ve arrived, you can hire a car or take advantage of local public transport, particularly the comfortable and frequent intercity buses.
The main advantage of flying compared to other forms of transport is clear: regardless of which Italian airport you’re departing from, the actual flight duration never exceeds an hour and a half. Combined with the high frequency and availability of flights, this means you can make the most of even your first and last days of holiday, perhaps choosing a morning arrival flight to Sicily and an evening return flight.
By contrast, driving your own car can make the journey extremely lengthy, depending of course on where you’re starting from, but considering you first need to reach Reggio Calabria and then cross the Strait of Messina by ferry, you could easily lose two days to travel.
Even opting for one of the ferries departing from mainland Italy isn’t the most relaxing journey: it takes over 12 hours from Civitavecchia to Palermo, and slightly less from Naples.
Below are the airlines and direct connections to the main Sicilian airports from european airports.
The direct flights to Palermo are carried out by the airlines Air France, Austrian Airlines, Eurowings, Jet2, Lufthansa, Norwegian, Norwegian Air Sweden AOC, Ryanair, SWISS, Scandinavian Airlines, Transavia France, Vueling Airlines, Wizz Air Malta, EasyJet and Transavia from the airports of Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Birmingham, Bristol, Brussels, Copenhagen, Dublin, Duesseldorf, Edinburgh, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Manchester, Marsiglia, Munich, Newcastle, Nizza, Oslo, Paris, Stockholm, Vienna and Zurich.
The direct flights to Catania are carried out by the airlines Aer Lingus, Air France, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings, Finnair, Iberia, Jet2, KLM, Lufthansa, Norwegian, Norwegian Air Sweden AOC, Ryanair, SWISS, Scandinavian Airlines, Transavia France, Vueling Airlines, EasyJet and Transavia from the airports of Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Birmingham, Bristol, Brussels, Copenhagen, Dublin, Duesseldorf, Edinburgh, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Helsinki, Leeds, London, Madrid, Manchester, Marsiglia, Munich, Oslo, Paris, Stockholm, Vienna and Zurich.
The direct flights to Trapani are carried out by the airline Ryanair from the airports of Brussels, Duesseldorf, London, Manchester and Stockholm.