Itavia

Hardly any small airline has cast as long a shadow as Itavia. For two decades it was a rather inconspicuous regional airline from Rome, connecting cities like Pescara, Ancona or Bari with the rest of Italy. Then on June 27, 1980, one of its DC-9s disappeared from radar near Ustica – and the name Itavia became synonymous with one of the great unsolved mysteries of European aviation. This page shows you how Itavia came about, which aircraft it flew, how you recognize it in old photos and why the story is still continuing in court today.

Itavia at a glance

Itavia was an Italian scheduled airline that existed from 1958 to 1981. It was founded on October 13, 1958 in Rome as Società di Navigazione Aerea Itavia. In July 1959 the first flight took off – with a single de Havilland DH.104 Dove on the Rome–Rimini route. The base was initially the small city airfield Rome-Urbe, later Rome-Ciampino.

In May 1962 the company became Aerolinee Itavia. In the mid-1960s the entrepreneur Aldo Davanzali took control and ran the airline until its end. Under him Itavia grew from a propeller operation into a pure jet airline with Fokker F28s and Douglas DC-9s.

Itavia was no competitor to the big Alitalia on international routes. Its role was domestic: It served cities that were less interesting for the state airline and connected them with Rome and the north. Over the years the network included Pescara, Forlì, Crotone, Bari, Foggia, Ancona, Bologna, Milan-Linate, Turin and Treviso, among others; from 1972 Itavia was also allowed to fly from Bergamo.

The history in stages

The early years were hard. In 1960 alone, Itavia lost a Heron on Monte Capanne on Elba, and all eleven occupants died. In 1963 a DC-3 crashed at Monte Serra Alta near Sora, killing eight people. Even so the network kept growing, and with the switch to jets from 1969 Itavia became a force to be reckoned with in Italian domestic air travel.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code IH: appeared in the flight number – for example IH 870, the ill-fated flight from Bologna to Palermo.
• Callsign ITAVIA: listed in reference works as the airline’s radio callsign.
• ICAO code: Today’s system with three letters was only introduced after Itavia ended. Modern lists do give a code for Itavia, but it played no role in flight operations in the 1970s.

The fleet: from the Dove to the DC-9

In a good 20 years Itavia went through almost the entire development of European regional aviation. At the start were small British propeller aircraft, at the end jets with a T-tail. The following overview is based on the fleet history in common reference works; individual years may differ slightly depending on the source.

Type	Period at Itavia	Number	Spotter note
de Havilland DH.104 Dove	1959–1960	1	First aircraft, Rome–Rimini route
de Havilland DH.114 Heron	1959–1964	7	Four-engine development of the Dove
Douglas DC-3 / C-47	1961–1963	4	Expanded the network, replaced by the Herald from 1963
Handley Page Dart Herald	1963–1973	5	High-wing aircraft with Rolls-Royce Dart turboprops
Fokker F28 Mk 1000	1969–1981	14	First jet, ideal for short runways
Douglas DC-9-15	1971–1981	5	Short version, including the Ustica aircraft I-TIGI
Douglas DC-9-30	1972–1981	4	Stretched version for more seats
Sud Aviation Caravelle VI-R	1975	1	Leased for a short time
DC-9-51 and DC-9-21	1976–1977 and 1980 respectively	1 each	Leased one-offs
Dassault Falcon 20	1977–1978	1	Business jet

Itavia also operated a Cessna 402B. In some fleet lists the F28, DC-9-15 and a leased MD-81 still appear beyond 1981 – this concerns the period of special administration, when the company continued to exist on paper and aircraft flew with other operators.

Fokker F28: the jet for the provinces

The Fokker F28 Fellowship was a perfect fit for Itavia. The Dutch short-haul jet from Fokker coped with short runways and simple infrastructure – exactly what many Itavia destinations offered. With 14 aircraft over the years, the F28 was the airline’s most numerous type. But it was also involved in two serious events: On January 1, 1974, the F28 I-TIDE crashed on approach to Turin, and 38 of the 42 occupants died. And on April 9, 1975, an F28 overran the end of the runway at Bergamo after both engines failed.

DC-9: the workhorse of the 1970s

From 1971 the first Douglas DC-9s were added, first the short Series 10 in the -15 version, from 1972 the stretched Series 30. The DC-9 was widespread in Europe at the time, and Alitalia used it too. Many Itavia aircraft came second-hand: The later accident aircraft I-TIGI, for example, was built in 1966 and first delivered as N902H to Hawaiian Airlines. The manufacturer was Douglas, after the 1967 merger McDonnell Douglas.

How to recognize Itavia

The livery was typical of its time and quick to recognize: an all-white aircraft with a red line at window height and a red area on the tail. Above the windows, “AEROLINEE ITAVIA” appeared in red capital letters. Later the scheme was slightly changed: On the F28s the “ITAVIA” titles moved below the window line near the door, and on the DC-9-15s the cheatline became narrower and swept up toward the tail. What such livery elements are called is explained in the article Livery design explained.

For identifying the type, the tail helps: The F28 and DC-9 both have a T-tail and rear-mounted engines. The F28 is clearly shorter and has a distinctive airbrake at the tail cone that opens rearward; the DC-9 looks slimmer and longer. Among the propeller types you can tell the twin-engine Dove from the four-engine Heron immediately. You’ll find more tips on old types in the guide Recognizing vintage aircraft.

Flight IH 870: the crash near Ustica

On the evening of June 27, 1980, the DC-9-15 I-TIGI took off in Bologna on the flight to Palermo – almost two hours late. On board were 77 passengers and four crew members. Around 9 p.m. local time contact was lost, the aircraft broke apart and crashed into the Tyrrhenian Sea north of the island of Ustica. Nobody survived.

What followed is one of the longest reckonings in aviation history. At the core, two explanations face each other:

Criminal trials against senior officers of the Italian Air Force ended in acquittals; in 2007 the Court of Cassation confirmed the last of them. In civil proceedings, by contrast, the Italian state was repeatedly ordered to pay damages to the relatives because it had not guaranteed the safety of the airspace. In 2023 former head of government Giuliano Amato again made headlines when he publicly blamed France. There is no final clarification of who hit the DC-9 and why.

For aviation fans the museum is no ordinary excursion destination. It is a place of remembrance where you see an airliner of the 1960s in its destroyed state – and one that shows how much accident investigation and reckoning matter. How another major disaster changed aviation’s rules is described in the article on the 1977 Tenerife aviation disaster.

The end of the airline

Itavia was already financially shaky and heavily indebted before the crash. After Ustica, bookings collapsed, and the discussion about an alleged bomb – that is, about a lack of safety on board – hit the airline’s reputation hard. In December 1980 flight operations ended and the operating license was revoked by the transport ministry; the sources give December 1980 or January 1981 for this.

The airline’s lawsuit dragged on for decades. A court in Rome awarded Itavia around 108 million euros in 2003, and the appeals court overturned that in 2007. After further rounds, the Court of Cassation decided in 2018 that the transport and defense ministries must compensate the airline. Aldo Davanzali did not live to see it; he died in 2005. The company continued afterward as a winding-up case and was placed under special administration again in 2019. An overview of other airline collapses is given in the article Major airline collapses in Europe.

Itavia in today’s spotting life

In scheduled service you haven’t seen Itavia for over 45 years. For your logbook the airline is a purely archival topic: slides, negatives and scans from the 1960s and 1970s, taken at Ciampino, Linate, Bologna or other Italian airports. If you have such pictures from an estate or a flea market, you can assign them cleanly by registration, type and livery. You’ll find tips on filing in the guide Archiving aircraft photos, and you can follow an aircraft’s life story with How old is this aircraft?.

Italy’s regional and private airlines compared

Itavia was one of the first private airlines to hold its own domestically alongside Alitalia. Around the same time Alisarda emerged in Sardinia, later Meridiana. Later challengers such as Air One, Volare Airlines or Eurofly only came after the liberalization of European air travel. None of these airlines still flies under its old name today – with Itavia, however, the end is inseparably tied to an unresolved disaster.

Common mix-ups

• Confusing Itavia with Alitalia – Itavia was an independent, private airline and never part of Alitalia.
• Logging the Ustica aircraft as a 1970s McDonnell Douglas DC-9 – I-TIGI was built in 1966, so still by Douglas, and first flew for Hawaiian Airlines.
• Equating F28 and DC-9 – both have a T-tail and rear engines, but the F28 is shorter and has the airbrake at the tail cone.
• Presenting the cause of the crash as established – civil courts assume a missile hit, in criminal terms the case has not been solved.
• Assuming the crash site was near Palermo – the DC-9 crashed into the sea north of the island of Ustica, before the approach to Palermo.
• Logging photos from 1981 on as Itavia operations – from mid-1981 the aircraft flew with Aermediterranea.

Conclusion

For over 20 years Itavia was a solid regional airline from Rome that began with the Dove and Heron and connected the Italian provinces to the network with the Fokker F28 and DC-9. Today, however, it is known above all for a single night: The crash of flight IH 870 near Ustica cost 81 people their lives, brought the airline down and has still not been conclusively resolved. For spotters what remains is a white-and-red airline of the 1970s that you recognize in archive photos by its titles and registration – and a wreck in Bologna that commemorates it.