Italy Low-Altitude Economy Survey Lists 15 Entities, 8 Active, as ENAC Sets First European eVTOL and Vertiport Rules
Why It MattersItaly shows a market where national rulemaking has moved ahead of commercial eVTOL service, while drone delivery and U-space operations, not crewed aircraft, are what currently fly.
What happened
A survey of Italy's low-altitude economy and drone sector covers fifteen entities: the civil aviation authority, the air navigation service provider and its U-space company, an airport group, a vertiport company, aircraft and drone makers, drone delivery and service firms, a space company, a health authority and a test airport. Each entry carries a status and the date it was last checked. Eight are active, five are unverified, one is planning and one has exited. Italy is the fifteenth country in the series to be surveyed as a single unit, and the survey's neighboring country entries are France and Germany.
Italy applies EU drone rules through the Ente Nazionale per l'Aviazione Civile (ENAC). On June 12, 2024, ENAC also put in force a regulation for piloted vertical takeoff aircraft, their corridors and vertiports, which ENAC describes as the first national regulation in Europe to supplement the EU framework for new innovative mobility. ENAC's advanced air mobility plan targeted first services during the 2025 Jubilee and the 2026 Winter Olympics; no eVTOL service or flight at either event was found.
D-Flight, an ENAV company, holds ENAC certificates for U-space services. ENAC designated the San Salvo U-space in Abruzzo from January 1, 2026, where DL Droni says it flew about 40 drone missions in May 2026. Amazon suspended its drone delivery project there in December 2025. UrbanV flies delivery drones from its Fiumicino sandbox vertiport under what ENAC calls the first SAIL III authorization in Italy, announced on March 12, 2026. ABzero has tested medical routes from Patti to the Aeolian Islands and at Varese, and FlyingBasket says its Bolzano-built cargo drones flew 189 supply flights to South Tyrol mountain huts.
No crewed eVTOL flight at Fiumicino after Volocopter's test of October 6, 2022, was found. Jetson says a single-seat Jetson ONE was identified as an ultralight on June 17, 2026. Because a claim about who is operating starts decaying the day it is published, each status carries its own verification date.
Industry impact & what to watch
Italy illustrates a sequencing pattern that matters for the advanced air mobility segment: the regulator can finish the rulebook well before aircraft carry passengers. ENAC's June 2024 regulation covers corridors and vertiports, yet the two showcase events its plan named came and went without an eVTOL service being found. Rules and infrastructure frameworks are therefore a necessary condition for passenger eVTOL operations, but they are not evidence that operations exist.
The activity that is verifiably flying sits one tier down. U-space certification through D-Flight, the San Salvo designation, UrbanV's SAIL III authorization at Fiumicino and the medical and mountain-supply routes all involve uncrewed aircraft. For the segment, that suggests drone logistics is where operating experience, authorization precedent and vertiport usage are being accumulated first, and that crewed eVTOL economics depend on that groundwork rather than running alongside it.
The survey's five unverified entries and the Amazon suspension in Abruzzo show how quickly a status can go stale in this sector, which is why dated verification is the useful unit of evidence. The next marker would be any crewed eVTOL flight at Fiumicino following Volocopter's October 2022 test, since none was found.
