Ciampino has been in continuous operation since 1916, which makes it one of the oldest airports in the world still handling scheduled passenger flights. Its runway is older than the Italian Air Force. Today the ciampino airport transfer bus is the busiest surface link between that runway and the centre of Rome, covering roughly fifteen kilometres of Via Appia Nuova in each direction. For forty-five years the field was Rome's principal airport. Delegations flew in for the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Film crews arrived here during the Cleopatra shoot at Cinecittà, a few kilometres up the same road. The airport's formal name, Aeroporto Giovan Battista Pastine, honours a Roman aviator killed in 1918 at the age of twenty-two. In January 1961 Fiumicino opened on the coast and absorbed the intercontinental traffic. Ciampino was left with military squadrons, the state flight and the papal departures that still leave from its apron. The quiet ended around 2000, when low-cost carriers took the cheaper slots and annual passenger numbers climbed past five million. A single terminal, extended piecemeal rather than rebuilt, absorbs the load. Airline schedules concentrate movements into early-morning and late-evening bands. The airport sits inside a residential belt at the foot of the Castelli Romani, so night flying is restricted and investment has gone into ground transport rather than concrete. Operators now list ciampino airport transfer bus tours and plain point-to-point coach runs from the same kerb, timed against arrivals boards instead of a fixed clock. Geography explains the route. The terminal address, Via Appia Nuova 1651, places it on the nineteenth-century highway laid parallel to the Appian Way, the consular road begun in 312 BC. Coaches turn north, pass the Cinecittà studio walls, cross the Grande Raccordo Anulare and finish beside Roma Termini, among the busiest railway stations in Europe. Metro Line A terminates at Anagnina, a short distance west of the apron. Romans call the service simply the navetta. Ciampino airport transfer bus tickets are sold as infrastructure rather than sightseeing: a flat 6 EUR one-way fare per person, running alongside a terminal open 00:00–23:59, seven days a week. Two thousand three hundred years of road engineering, reduced to a boarding pass and a suitcase in the hold.