Genoa Airport

At one Italian airport pesto is exempt from liquid ban

Here’s a great – and tasty – airport amenity:

Italy’s Genoa airport has come up with great way to encourage – and allow – passengers to carry  jars of pesto in their carry-on bags, despite the ban on pastes and liquids that would normally cause those souvenirs to be forfeited.

Under the airport’s new Il Pesto è Buono (pesto is good) campaign, departing passengers may carry one or two jars of pesto in their carry-on bags on direct flights leaving the airport, but only if those bags have a “Il pesto è buono” sticker on them – which can be ‘purchased’ by making a donation of a least 50 cents a jar to a children’s charity called Flying Angels .

Here are some of the program’s rules for flying with pesto:

  • At the security checks, the passenger will have to extract the jars from the luggage and place them aside in the bowl, informing the security staff
  • The jars will be checked and then returned to the passenger
  • This process is only valid for jars containing “pesto genovese.”

An airport press officer told The Independent that the airport worked out the program with ENAC, Italy’s civil aviation authority, and chose pesto “Firstly because jars of pesto were among the most commonly confiscated objects at airport security, and also because pesto is the most famous food product of Genoa – it’s one of the symbols of the city, every Genoese family has their own recipe, and it’s one of the most famous sauces in the world.

This is definitely the airport amenity of the week!