On 1 September 1970, the Figari town hall hosted the first meeting with a view to building an airport, then planned as a category D facility, to open up the south of Corsica.
In 1971, the airport project was upgraded to category B. At the time, the sum of 56 million francs was invested in the construction.
Opened on 22 July 1975, Figaro-Sud Corse airport was served in its early years by Air Alpes, TAT, EAS, Point Air, Air Liberté, Air Littoral, Air Lib and Kyrnair. All these companies have since gone bankrupt.
Today, the hub is served year-round by Air Corsica in association with Air France as part of the public service to and from Marseille, Nice and Paris Orly.
The 1st low-cost airline to land at the airport was Ryanair in 2009. Since then, low-cost traffic has increased tenfold in the space of ten years!
From the end of March to the beginning of November (IATA summer season), air traffic at the airport is much higher thanks to the additional seats offered by around ten airlines in addition to Air Corsica and Air France.
Figari-Sud Corse airport is also the largest in Corsica in terms of business aviation traffic (aircraft movements), with a new terminal dedicated to this clientele since June 2013.
As a result of its strong growth in passenger numbers during the 2010s, the airport, which was designed to handle 500,000 passengers a year, set its traffic record in 2022 with 907,102 passengers, approaching the one million passenger mark.
Improvements were carried out in 2018 / 2019, as well as major repairs to the runway. This work caused a complete interruption to air traffic from 18/02/19 to 24/03/19. In addition, roadworks were carried out to facilitate access to the airport and reduce traffic jams in the village of Figari, especially during the summer period.
According to the Union des Aéroports Français, Figari-Sud Corse will be France's 17th busiest airport by 2022 (by number of passengers carried - category >100,000 passengers) and still the island's 3rd busiest airport after Ajaccio-Napoléon Bonaparte and Bastia-Poretta.