Air Dolomiti

Is Air Dolomiti safe?

Yes. Air Dolomiti has flown since 1991 without a fatal accident or the loss of an aircraft, it is overseen by Italy's ENAC under EASA rules, and it holds IOSA registrationIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary. We score it 85. That puts it just below its parent Lufthansa (87) and close to ITA Airways (87), Italy's main airline. It loses points for two non-fatal accidents at Munich on the turboprops it no longer flies and for one serious take-off error at Brussels in 2016.

Most travellers meet Air Dolomiti without booking it. It flies Lufthansa's routes between Munich or Frankfurt and Italian cities such as Bari, Bologna, Florence, Milan, Turin, Venice, Verona and Trieste, mostly with LH flight numbers. The aircraft, crews and certificate are Air Dolomiti's own, and its events count here, not on the Lufthansa page.

What accidents has Air Dolomiti had?

Two in our 20-year window, both at Munich on ATR 72s, which Air Dolomiti has since retired.

On 24 August 2008, an ATR 72 bound for Bologna was cleared to take off right after an A320, then told to stop. Back at the holding point the crew saw hot brakes, and another crew radioed that the left tyre was on fire. All 63 people left by the rear and front left exits; one passenger broke her forearm. Germany's BFU found a ruptured brake cylinder and could not explain the heat from the taxiing and the aborted take-off alone.

On 17 May 2012, flight LH1912 to Venice reported smoke in the cabin shortly after take-off, and on descent back to Munich the crew got a fire warning on engine 2 and shut it down. After landing, the ATR turned left off the runway into the grass and its nose gear collapsed. Six of the 62 people on board had minor injuries. The BFU traced the engine failure to a fatigue crack in a turbine blade and found the rudder travel limiter stuck in its high-speed setting, which limited how far the pilots could steer.

Before that, in November 1999, a Fokker 100 that Air Dolomiti leased from Alpi Eagles was damaged on landing at Barcelona. It is outside our window. In January 2025 a catering truck hit the tail of a parked E195 at Munich; that was a ground vehicle, not a flight, and we do not count it.

The Brussels take-off in 2016

On 5 October 2016, an Air Dolomiti Embraer 195 flying LH2293 from Brussels to Munich was told to line up on runway 07R and wait. It began its take-off roll instead. At the same moment an Aer Lingus A320 was below 250 feet on final to runway 01, which crosses 07R, and the tower ordered it to go around. Both aircraft landed safely.

Belgium's investigators named the take-off without clearance as the cause. Among the contributing factors were the crew's failure to cross-check the clearance, poor doubt-clearing in the cockpit and the crew's unfamiliarity with Brussels, along with the airport's complex taxiway layout and air traffic control lining aircraft up so close to a runway in use. It is the one event in Air Dolomiti's recent record that came down to its own crew, and it is the main reason incidents score 80.

Since then the records show technical returns of the kind any regional airline has: smoke in the cabin after take-off from Graz and Milan Linate in 2022, hydraulic failures in 2017, 2018 and 2019, and a cracked windshield over northern Italy in 2018. All ended with safe landings.

How old is the Air Dolomiti fleet?

Air Dolomiti flies one aircraft family. In March 2026 it had 28 first-generation Embraer E-Jets: E195s, which it has flown since 2009, and nine 108-seat E190s. Through 2028 it is taking 13 E195s from Austrian Airlines, which will replace the E190s and leave a fleet of 30 E195s. The E-Jet is a fly-by-wireFly-by-wireA flight control system in which the pilot's inputs go to computers, which then move the control surfaces. Many such systems also stop unsafe manoeuvres.More in the glossary design, but it is not the current E2 generation, and many of the jets have been flying for more than a decade. Air Dolomiti publishes no average age.

Flying Air Dolomiti: what to check

• Read "operated by" on Lufthansa tickets to Italy. If it says Air Dolomiti, you fly an Embraer regional jet with an Italian crew, and this page, not the Lufthansa one, is the record that applies.
• Expect weather delays in autumn and winter. Fog in the Po valley and at Venice and Verona, and wind at Trieste, cause diversions; the crew will not land below the minimums.
• Allow for a diversion at Florence. Its short runway and nearby hills leave little margin in tailwinds, and a flight may land at Bologna or Pisa instead; plan onward connections with time to spare.

How we scored it

Clean fatal and hull-loss records (accident 90) and EASA oversight with IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary (90) carry Air Dolomiti. The single-type Embraer fleet scores 70, the Brussels take-off and the technical returns score 80 for incidents, and the network scores 85. Overall 85.