The final event of the cross-border cooperation project ON CLOUD NINE “cONnecting CLOse and Unexplored Destinations with New INter-Adriatic transport sErvices” will be held on 29 September 2022 in Podgorica.
The project is funded within the 1st Call for Standard projects of the Interreg IPA CBC Italy-Albania-Montenegro 2014-2020 Programme, Axes 4 “Increasing cross border accessibility, promoting sustainable transport service and facilities and improving public infrastructures”.
The project lead partner is Airports of Puglia S.p.A. The other partners are: JSC Airports of Montenegro, Molise Region, and Albanian Civil Aviation Authority.
The project ON CLOUD NINE aimed to create new connections between Puglia and Albania and between Puglia and Montenegro through new air routes. Yet, new challenges, have faced project partners with new assignments.
The COVID inevitably impacted the implementation of activities, due to reduction of air connections in 2020 and in 2021 and several restrictions applied by Programme Countries to travel movements.
For this reason, during the project implementation, partners asked for several modifications, not only linked to extension in timing, but also to activities: the pilot actions consist of new multimodal connections with a road connection between Puglia and Molise and an air route from Bari to Tirana, as well as of the creation of COVID free airports zones with relevant equipment and vehicles, aimed at testing feasibility of new interventions, paving the way for further broader developments and executing concrete solutions about accessibility and connectivity in air transport.
In fact, COVID emergency has a serious impact on air transport and for this reason project aimed also to define processes and management models of pre-screening activities in the airports, as they can become COVID-free. Moreover, partners realised some different communication and promotional activities in order to improve passengers' travel experience through the implementation of interventions aimed at strengthening airport facilities in terms of infrastructures and services.
So, although the primary project faced many obstacles, it still managed to reach tangible results thanks to partnership cohesion and commitment to carry out activities within due dates.
All these project results ameliorate travel experience of passengers that can become perfectly satisfied (i.e., really like “on cloud nine”).