He was then admitted to the aviation school of the Aeronautical Service of the Royal Italian Army, and obtained the license of military airplane observer.

He held the position of Head of Air Traffic Service at the Ministry of Aeronautics, with responsibility for civil aviation, from 28 May 1924 to 15 October 1933, when he was replaced by General Aldo Pellegrini.

Under his direction, the Italian civil aviation had a remarkable development; on 1 April 1926 the first airline from Turin to Pavia was inaugurated in the presence of Benito Mussolini, and between 1926 and 1928 the Genoa-Palermo, Brindisi-Athens-Constantinople, and Rome-Venice-Vienna lines came into operation.

[10] Air lines linking Italy with Great Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Algeria were also established, and new airports were built in Genoa, Trieste and Naples.

Also on his initiative the Military Meteorological Service was reorganized, the Office for civil protection was created, and the Royal Air Club of Italy was established.

Besides his passion for flying, Molfese also had an interest in art, and for many years he wrote on the subject in a dedicated column in the Argentine newspaper La Razon in Buenos Aires.

He was appointed delegate for the aviation sector of the Italian Armistice Commission with France (CIAF), based in Tunis, and remained in North Africa until July 1942, when he was promoted to colonel and transferred initially to the Air Force Command of Tunisia and then to that of Sicily.

In December 1943 he was sent to Bassano del Grappa, where the Ministry of National Defense of the Italian Social Republic had its seat, but the Directorate of Military Personnel placed him on unlimited leave pending his final discharge.

[13] After the resignation of Colonel Ernesto Botto from the office of Secretary of State for the Air Force and chief of staff of the National Republican Air Force (ANR) after he had entered into open conflict with Roberto Farinacci and with the commander of Luftflotte 2, Field Marshal Wolfram von Richthofen, General Arrigo Tessari was appointed in his place, but Tessari turned out to be openly pro-German and tried to favor the merger of the ANR into the Luftwaffe.