Alta Badia: there is no airport, and in winter the right one isn't the obvious one

The real constraint isn't the runway: it's the passes

From Venice and Treviso the short road to Corvara goes over the Passo Falzarego, 2,105 metres, and the Passo Valparola, 2,192 metres. From Bolzano the summer shortcut runs over the Passo Sella, 2,240 metres, or the Passo Gardena, 2,121 metres, and saves a good half hour. Those closures are not seasonal and are not announced weeks ahead. They are sudden closures, six or forty-eight hours long, decided on the day after every heavy snowfall, because of avalanche risk. In a single winter the Passo Gardena ran up forty-one days of closure. If a pass shuts while the client is already on the road, the alternative exists — round by Cortina, Dobbiaco and Brunico — but it is two hundred and forty-three kilometres and about an hour longer, in a car that had been booked for a different duration.

Why in winter we say Bolzano

There is only one route that depends on no pass at all: the Brenner motorway, exit at Bressanone or Chiusa, then the Val Badia main road up to Corvara. It starts at Bolzano, it is an hour and a half or a little more, and it crosses nothing that can close during the morning. Bolzano has a runway of 1,432 metres by 45 — lengthened and rebuilt in December 2021, not the 1,293 metres almost everyone still quotes — at 787 feet of elevation. It takes turboprops and light jets, with a performance check case by case: the approaches are steep and the terrain is that of an Alpine valley floor. Prior permission from the airport operator is required, and for instrument flight a specific crew qualification issued by the airport itself. It is a smaller and more constrained airport than Venice. It is also the one that, from December to March, gets the client to the destination without surprises.

When Venice, Treviso or Innsbruck are the better call

Venice has 3,300 metres of runway and CAT III ILS: anything gets in, including a long range arriving from the United States or the Gulf. It is the right choice in summer, for the Maratona dles Dolomites or a stay in July, when the passes are open and the drive is a fine one. Worth knowing: the general aviation stands number five, with a maximum stay of seventy-two hours, and during the Biennale or the Film Festival there are fewer still. Treviso has 2,420 metres, CAT II ILS and customs, and sits twenty minutes closer. The tower, though, closes at twenty-two hundred local: there are no night operations. Innsbruck is the closest as the crow flies and takes aircraft up to heavy, but it comes with two conditions to check before quoting, not after: the crew must hold specific training to operate with less than five kilometres of visibility, and winter weekends require a slot — which is exactly when the client wants to fly. The window allowed by the noise restriction runs from 06:30 to 20:00. Verona is the only one of the five open twenty-four hours with customs always on duty: when the timing is awkward, or the flight arrives from outside Schengen late in the evening, it is the answer, even if it is three hours by road.

The last leg by helicopter

It can be done, but we don't promise it before we have checked. The two helipads in the area open to passenger transport — Pralongià and Bec de Roces — are at 2,157 and 2,050 metres, have no fire service, and one of the two has a grass surface. The one that makes logistical sense, at the Hotel Fanes in Badia, appears to be registered with ENAC but with data not publicly available: before we write it into a quote, we check it with its operator. It matters to us that the client knows exactly what service he is buying. A helicopter that depends on a low cloud base is not a transfer: it is a hope, and we don't sell it as anything else.

The week when the Dolomites are full

The men's World Cup on the Gran Risa, giant slalom and slalom, traditionally falls around 20 and 21 December, and Val Gardena races on the 18th and 19th. Between the eighteenth and the twenty-third of December the whole area is saturated: hotels, roads, aircraft stands. Anyone asking for a flight on those days should be told beforehand, not afterwards. In summer the peak is the Maratona dles Dolomites, which closes the passes to traffic for the whole morning.

How we work

We ask for the date, the number of people and the luggage — luggage before seats, because an aircraft with the right seats and the wrong hold is no use. Then we look at the weather on the passes, not just the flight time, and we propose the airport that holds up even if it snows. The price of the aircraft is set by the operator; ours is an intermediation fee, and it is written down.