Quick answer — Palermo Falcone-Borsellino (PMO, Punta Raisi) to the city centre
- Bus: Prestia e Comandè, €6 in advance and €6.50 on board, every 30 minutes, 50 minutes to Stazione Centrale, all year round
- Train: €6.80, station inside the terminal — but the real journey to Palermo Centrale is about an hour, not the half hour you may have read
- From the airport: first bus 05:05, last bus 01:05; first train 05:18, last train 00:20
- Towards the airport: last bus from Stazione Centrale 21:30, last train 22:12 — a late evening flight has no bus at all
- Taxi: fixed fares by zone published by the airport — €39 to the Viale Lazio area, €44 to Corso Vittorio Emanuele, €50 to Stazione Centrale
Landing at night, boarding a ship, or travelling with children and cases? See the private transfer from Palermo Airport to the city centre →
| Option | Journey time | Cost | Luggage | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bus (Prestia e Comandè) | 50 min to Stazione Centrale, 40 min to Politeama | €6 in advance, €6.50 on board; €4 children 3–12 | No allowance published — check before you travel | One or two people landing between 05:05 and 01:05 |
| Train (Trenitalia regional) | About 1h02 to Palermo Centrale on the day we checked; 51 min to 1h09 | €6.80 adult, €3.50 age 4 to under 12, free under 4 | Ramps to the platforms, no lift | Notarbartolo and the north of the city |
| Taxi / taxi sharing | No official time published — traffic-dependent | Fixed fares €39 / €44 / €50 by zone; sharing €10 per passenger, minimum 4 | Whatever fits the car — confirm at the rank | Short notice, when the ranks are working |
| Private transfer | Door to door, no stops, driver meets you in arrivals | Fixed price, confirmed at booking | Agreed per vehicle, cases counted in advance | Families, groups, night landings, delayed flights, cruise departures |
Fares, times and frequencies checked 12 August 2026 on the official Prestia e Comandè leaflet, the Trenitalia airport page and aeroportodipalermo.it. Sicilian timetables move with the season — reopen those pages the week you fly.
| Option | Price | Journey time |
|---|---|---|
| Prestia e Comandè direct bus | €6per person | 50 min |
| Private transfer | from €144per vehicle · up to 3 passengers (minivan for groups) | 30–45 min |
| Prestia e Comandè direct bus — Direct and cheap — but fixed departure times and no door-to-door | ||
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How far Punta Raisi really is
Palermo's airport is not a city airport. GESAP, which runs it, states that "the airport of Palermo is about 35 kilometres from Palermo", reached by the A29 at the exit signed Puntaraisi – Aeroporto Falcone Borsellino (aeroportodipalermo.it, checked 12 August 2026). No official driving time is published for that stretch, so the yardstick to keep is the scheduled one: the bus is certified at 50 minutes to Stazione Centrale, the train takes about an hour to Palermo Centrale.
Still choosing where to sleep? See our Palermo destination page and the island-wide Sicily overview.
The bus: the default answer, and a good one
The airport bus is run by Prestia e Comandè. The stops are outside the terminal on the ground floor of the Arrivals Hall, on your right, marked with route boards (aeroportodipalermo.it, checked 12 August 2026). Which bay is not published, so read the boards.
Fares, from the operator's leaflet: €6.00 one way and €10.00 return bought online or in advance; €6.50 and €11.00 bought on board; €4.00 and €8.00 for children aged 3 to 12; free under 3. Buying ahead saves fifty cents, which is not the point: the company recommends booking, and its missed-connection rules turn on seat availability.
Where to buy, and the hours that matter: the Terminal Fazello ticket office at Stazione Centrale, 06:00–20:00 daily; the ticket office at the airport bus bays, 07:30–23:00 daily, after which you buy on board; company sellers at the Via Roma 289 and Piazza Ruggero Settimo 18 stops, 04:00–17:30; on board in cash or by contactless card; online at booking.prestiaecomande.it; and in the company's app.
One clause worth knowing: if your flight is late and you miss the run you booked, the ticket stays valid on any other departure the same day, subject to free seats, and you are asked to be at the stop 10 minutes before departure (official FAQ, checked 12 August 2026). A ninety-minute delay does not burn your ticket; a delay past the last run of the night does.
Bus timetable: 05:05 to 01:05 one way, 03:30 to 21:30 the other
The bus runs every 30 minutes, every day of the year including public holidays, and the operator certifies 50 minutes for the full airport-to-Stazione Centrale run. Into the city, the first departure from the airport is 05:05 and the last is 01:05.
That last figure carries a footnote in your favour: the three night runs — 00:05, 00:35 and 01:05 — are asterisked as having "departure flexibility of about 10 to 15 minutes", meaning they hold for late flights. Not indefinitely, and not for your flight specifically, but the operator prints the tolerance itself.
Now the direction nobody checks before booking a flight home. Towards the airport, from the Terminal Fazello at Stazione Centrale, the first bus is at 03:30 and the last at 21:30. If your flight leaves at 23:30, the airport bus is not running — the most expensive detail on this page.
Frequency, journey time, first and last departures and the night-run note from the official timetable (version 4, July 2026); fares and points of sale from the tickets page. Checked 12 August 2026.
Which stop to get off at, and how far you still walk
This is where the bus is won or lost. The operator publishes the running time to every stop, and the last ten minutes are the slowest:
- Via Belgio 2 — 20 minutes
- Via A. De Gasperi 82 and Viale Croce Rossa 56 — 25 minutes
- Via Libertà 106 (corner of Viale Lazio) and Via Libertà 80 — 30 minutes
- Via Libertà at Via Notarbartolo and Via Libertà 42 – Piazza Croci — 35 minutes
- Politeama – Piazza Ruggero Settimo — 40 minutes
- Via Roma 265 – Vucciria — 45 minutes
- Terminal Fazello, Stazione Centrale — 50 minutes
The question is not how long the bus takes but where your bed sits. On OpenStreetMap pedestrian data, Terminal Fazello to the Quattro Canti — the crossroads at the heart of the old town — is about 1.0 km, under 15 minutes on foot; from the Politeama stop it is about 720 metres, 10 minutes, to the Teatro Massimo and 1.3 km, 17 minutes, to the Quattro Canti. So around the Teatro Massimo or the north end of Via Maqueda, get off at the Politeama at 40 minutes: ten minutes less on the bus and a shorter walk. On the Ballarò or Kalsa side, stay to the terminus.
One caveat we cannot resolve. The timetable page also publishes an alternative city routing "during the closure of Via Libertà", skipping Via Libertà and the Politeama for Via Puglisi Bertolino and the Dalla Chiesa, Notarbartolo/Petrarca, Sciuti, Restivo/Lazio and Strasburgo/De Gasperi stops. It was still published on prestiaecomande.it on 12 August 2026 and carries no start or end date, so if your plan depends on the Politeama stop, open that page the day before you fly.
Stop-by-stop times from the official intermediate-stops table (version 4, July 2026); walking distances from OSRM pedestrian routing on OpenStreetMap data. Checked 12 August 2026.
The train: cheapest per head, and slower than it reads
Palermo has something most Italian airports do not: a railway station inside the terminal. GESAP writes that "the railway station is on the basement level of the Terminal", and the service runs every day (aeroportodipalermo.it, checked 12 August 2026). No shuttle, no road to cross with a suitcase.
It is a Trenitalia regional service, two trains an hour in each direction, dropping to one an hour in some bands. The fare is €6.80 for adults and €3.50 for children aged 4 to under 12; under-4s travel free with a fare-paying adult; families or groups of 2 to 6, with at least one paying adult, get 50% off for teenagers between 12 and under 18. We checked €6.80 on the purchase engine for 13 August 2026: that is what it sells, second class.
Now the part that catches people. You will read that the train reaches the city in "just over half an hour" — not to Palermo Centrale. Trenitalia's own page carries a footnote making clear that the half-hour figure refers to Palermo Aeroporto to Palermo Notarbartolo, a station in the northern half of the city. On the real timetable for 13 August 2026 the run to Centrale takes between 51 minutes and 1h09, most departures 1h02, leaving the airport at roughly minute :26 and minute :45. Against a bus certified at 50 minutes to the same station for €6.00, the train wins when your address is near Notarbartolo or the north of the city, or when you are travelling on by train anyway.
There is a faster train, and it mostly is not for you: Trenitalia's "Genio express" runs from Palermo Centrale to the airport calling only at Notarbartolo. On the timetable we opened for Thursday 13 August 2026 there were exactly two, at 05:20 (34 minutes) and 05:55 (36 minutes), and none in the airport-to-city direction — one day's snapshot, not the rule for the year.
A naming trap, too: "Trinacria Express" has gone from Trenitalia's airport page but survives on the Comune di Palermo's tourism portal, which still quotes 45 minutes, €5.90 and a taxi "no more than €45" — matching neither Trenitalia's €6.80 nor the airport's taxi tariffs.
Station from GESAP; frequency, fares and the Notarbartolo footnote from Trenitalia; running times, Genio express and the €6.80 price from the purchase engine for 13 August 2026; outdated figures from the Comune di Palermo tourism portal. Checked 12 August 2026.
Train tickets and step-free access
Tickets are the Biglietto Digitale Regionale, sold on trenitalia.com, in the Trenitalia app, at station ticket offices, through authorised travel agencies and by the call centre, up to 5 minutes before scheduled departure (Trenitalia, checked 12 August 2026). Whether the airport station has a staffed window or ticket machines is not listed officially: buy in the app before you go down.
Accessibility deserves a straight answer, because "station inside the terminal" reads too optimistically. RFI's record for Palermo Aeroporto lists three passenger platforms, a step-free route on the level and/or by ramp to platforms 1, 2 and 3, a tactile guide path from the entrance and raised platform edges — and records that a lift is not present. Assistance comes from the Sala Blu network, reference desk Messina, requested up to 12 hours before departure or arrival (RFI, checked 12 August 2026).
Taxi and taxi sharing: the fixed fares, and what they do not say
The airport publishes fixed taxi fares by destination zone, which removes most of the argument at the kerb. From aeroportodipalermo.it, checked 12 August 2026: €39 for Viale Michelangelo / Viale Lazio, €44 for Corso Calatafimi / Corso Vittorio Emanuele, €50 for Stazione Centrale / Brancaccio.
Corso Vittorio Emanuele runs through the old town to the Quattro Canti, but the bands follow the airport's zones rather than the shape of the historic centre: Stazione Centrale and Brancaccio, equally central, sit in the €50 band. The page does not map street by street, nor does it say whether the fares hold at night, on Sundays and holidays, or whether luggage is included — so ask which zone your address falls in and say the fare out loud before the cases go in the boot.
The rank works in step with flight arrivals, at the exit of Arrivals, where there is also a TAXI information desk. If nothing is operating, the airport publishes two numbers — Coop. Trinacria, +39 091 225455 or +39 091 6878, and Coop. Autoradio Taxi, +39 091 513311 or +39 091 8481 — with a wait of about 20 minutes. Fine at two in the afternoon; long at one in the morning with a child asleep on a suitcase.
There is also official taxi sharing, two dedicated bays in Arrivals: €10 per passenger, applied only once a minimum of 4 passengers has been reached, run by the same cooperatives (Trinacria via 6878.it and WhatsApp 331-4296956, Autoradio Taxi via taxi-palermo.com, 091-8481 and WhatsApp 331-3284403). For a solo traveller with time it is the cheapest door-to-door number here; with a check-in or a ship to make, "once four people have shown up" is not a schedule.
The hours when nothing runs at all
Into the city, the last train leaves the airport at 00:20 and the last bus at 01:05; the first train is 05:18 and the first bus 05:05. Between 01:05 and 05:05 there is no scheduled public transport from Punta Raisi into Palermo — the options are a taxi from the rank, if the rank is working, or a car booked before you left home.
Out to the airport the gap is bigger and starts earlier: last bus from Stazione Centrale 21:30, last train 22:12, then nothing until the 03:30 bus and the 04:00 train. A flight at 06:30 is served by the 03:30 bus, if you accept standing at Terminal Fazello at twenty past three in the morning. A flight at 23:45 is not served at all. Train times confirmed on the Trenitalia purchase engine for 13 August 2026, checked 12 August 2026.
And judge your arrival by when you will be outside with your bags: a 00:40 landing still has to disembark and clear the belt before a 01:05 bus that holds 10 to 15 minutes.
When you do not need a private transfer
We sell private transfers, and we would rather be useful than sell you one you do not need. Take the bus or the train if:
- You are one or two people with a case each. €6.00 a head against any car is not a close contest.
- You land between about 05:30 and midnight. The bus runs every 30 minutes, all year, holidays included.
- You are staying near the Politeama, the Teatro Massimo or the north end of Via Maqueda. Forty minutes on the bus, ten on foot.
- You are staying near Stazione Centrale, or catching a train onwards. The terminus is at Terminal Fazello, under 15 minutes on foot from the Quattro Canti.
- Your address is around Notarbartolo or the north of the city — the one case where the train's reputation for speed is deserved.
- You are alone, unhurried and happy to wait for three strangers. Taxi sharing at €10 a head is the cheapest door-to-door option the airport publishes.
If that is you, close this page, buy the ticket online for €6.00, and look right as you come out of Arrivals.
When a car with a driver earns its place
The honest case for booking ahead is narrow, and it turns on the hours and the load, not the distance:
- You land in the 01:05–05:05 window. Nothing scheduled runs into the city. A taxi works if a taxi is there; a booked car works because it was booked.
- You fly out after the 21:30 bus or the 22:12 train, or before the 03:30 bus. The classic Palermo mistake: checking the inbound timetable and assuming the outbound mirrors it.
- You are three or more with cases. Multiply €6.00 by four, add the walk at both ends and the last kilometre on cobbles, and the comparison stops being about money.
- Children, a pushchair, or someone who cannot manage a ramp with luggage. The airport station has ramps but no lift, and Sala Blu assistance must be requested up to 12 hours ahead.
- Your flight is likely to be late. The pickup is scheduled on the real arrival time of your flight, and the waiting time is the one set out in the booking conditions.
- You are boarding a ship. Cruise departures have a deadline no timetable respects, and neither bus nor train reaches the port. The train ends at Palermo Centrale; the bus passes closer on its way there, at the Politeama after 40 minutes and Via Roma 265 – Vucciria after 45 — but the last stretch to the quay is still on you, with the cases.
- Palermo is only a staging post on the way elsewhere on the island.
What you get is a driver waiting in arrivals with your name, one vehicle to your address, and a price per vehicle fixed for your date and time and confirmed before you pay — no meter, no zone argument at the kerb. What you do not get is a better deal than €6.00 on a bus. If your case is on that list, the private transfer from Palermo Airport to Palermo city centre is this journey with no timetable in it.
What to check on the day you travel
- The current Prestia e Comandè leaflet, for first and last departures in your direction.
- Whether the "closure of Via Libertà" routing applies, if you planned to use the Politeama stop.
- Your real arrival time against 01:05, and your real departure time against 21:30.
- The train timetable for your own day — our running times come from one date, 13 August 2026.
- The taxi zone fare before you board, since no night, holiday or luggage conditions are published for it.
Arriving when the timetable has stopped
A private transfer from Palermo Falcone-Borsellino to the city centre puts a driver in arrivals with your name and takes one vehicle to your address — including the 01:05–05:05 window, and evening departures after the 21:30 last bus. The price per vehicle is fixed for your date and time and confirmed at booking, with waiting time as set out in the booking conditions.
Plan the rest of Sicily
Staying in the city first? Start from Palermo, or take the island-wide view in Sicily. The same guide for the eastern routes: Catania Airport to Catania city centre, Catania Airport to Taormina, Catania Airport to Siracusa, Catania Airport to Giardini Naxos, Messina cruise port to Taormina and Milazzo to Catania Airport. For a car with a driver on this route, see the Palermo Airport to Palermo transfer.
