The airport has seen a steady increase in the number of transit passengers over the years, mainly due to a growth in low-cost airlines and flights.

Luftfahrtruppen, the aerial component of the Austro-Hungarian Army, along the Via Tiburtina Valeria road a military airfield is built by the Regio Esercito, which arrived on 26 October 1917 with two Farman 14.

[6] Itavia, constituted in 1958 to operate between secondary airports not served by Alitalia, opened its first route Pescara-Roma-Urbe on 15 July 1959 with a 8-seats de Havilland Dove.

With the development of Itavia also the number of routes increased between the end of 1960s and beginning of 1970s, including Roma, Milano, Ancona, Crotone, Forlì, Lecce, Bergamo, Bologna, Treviso-Venezia, Catania and Palermo.

[7] As of 1 February 1979, Itavia was forced to suspend its flights to Pescara due to the revision of the minimum landing requirements on some Italian airports implemented by ANPAC, the National Association of Civil Aviation Pilots.

From 1984, the flight to Milan Linate Airport was managed by another company of the Alitalia group: Aero Trasporti Italiani (ATI), based in Naples.

Today the airport has a catchment area of over 600,000 passengers annually and connects the city of Pescara and the entire region with many Italian and European destinations, in particular with the services offered by the airlines Ryanair and Volotea.

In addition, the airport is planned to be served in the future by the new trolleybus system currently under construction, the first phrase of which will connect the Pescara railway station with Montesilvano, starting in 2023 or 2024.