Romantic nostalgia for the golden age of travel has combined with the commercialism of 21st-century tourism to bring seaplanes to the Mediterranean for the first time in 60 years Flying boats were a common sight in the Twenties and Thirties but largely died out after the Second World War. Companies in Italy and Greece now believe they will be profitable once more because they offer tourists access to remoter areas such as islands, an attractive alternative to increasingly crowded mainland resorts.

Seaplanes also cut journey times radically for business travellers: a four-hour trip by train and ferry from Rome to Ischia will become a half-hour hop; the only drawback is a baggage restriction of 11 kilos (24lb).

The first Italian service, operated by Aqua Airlines, opens today from Urbe, the Rome city airport, to the islands of Ischia and Ponza in the Bay of Naples, to be followed in the summer by daily flights between Naples, Ischia, Capri, Ponza and Procida, and between Palermo and Catania in Sicily and Lipari in the Aeolian islands.

The Greek network, run by AirSea Lines, a Greek-Canadian joint venture, will operate from today from Lavrion, 40 kilometres (25 miles) southeast of Athens, to the islands of Ios, Kalimnos, Mykonos, Paros, Santorini and Kos. Next month a service will start from Corfu to Paxos, Ithaca, Lefkada, Cephalonia, Zakynthos and to the port of Patras, with a link from Patras to Brindisi, in southern Italy.

The Italian service will use amphibious versions of the nine-seater Cessna Caravan 208, with the Greek operation using the 14-seater De Havilland Twin Otter. Aqua Airlines is also planning to bring Twin Otters into service as its network expands.

AirSea Lines is also planning services in Britain in the Lake District and Wales as well as from London to waterways in southern England. Hamish Mitchell, owner of Scotia Seaplanes and head of the UK Seaplane Association, has set up a flying school in Glasgow to cater for the “growing demand” for seaplane pilots.

Mauro Calvano, the managing director of Aqua Airlines, said that from next year Italian seaplanes would operate between the Venice Lido and Croatia, and from Milan and Portofino to the Côte d’Azur in France.

The first commercial flying-boat service in Italy began in 1926, between Trieste and Turin with stops at Venice and Pavia, and between Genoa and Ostia, on the coast near Rome. The same year the first international seaplane flights ran from Brindisi to Istanbul and Rhodes via Athens. The first seaplane flight took place in France in 1910, when a pioneering version called Le Canard (the duck) flew 800 metres. The next year came the first US seaplane, the Curtiss N9, precursor of the Felixstowe, used as an antisubmarine aircraft in the First World War, and later the Grumman Goose, used in the Second World War together with the Short Sunderland.

Flying boats were used mainly for passenger transport, with Imperial Airways – a forerunner of British Airways – flying aircraft between Britain and the Middle East, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The “Empire Boats”, with wicker chairs, cocktail bars and smoking lounges, made stop-overs at Lake Bracciano, north of Rome, where the flying boat pier and terminal (now a hotel) still exist.

High points

— Passenger seaplane services operate in big harbours such as Sydney and Vancouver, on the Great Barrier Reef, around islands such as Hawaii and Fiji and in isolated areas such as Alaska and Norway's fjords

— With their unique ability to rescue survivors of marine accidents, they are still used for emergency missions by the US Coast Guard

— Between the wars, seaplanes were used for passenger services. Imperial Airways was researching a mid-air refuelled transatlantic service when war broke out

— The first successful transatlantic passenger service was inaugurated by Pan American in 1939

— A Boeing Clipper carried 17 passengers at a cost equivalent to $8,000 (£4,000) for a return journey

Sources: aviation-history.com ; imperial-airways.com ; lochlomondseaplanes.com

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