Review by Nadeem Z

Airport Overview

The well-known Asian Developer by the name of BDOaviation who is very known to develop sceneries in the Asian part of the world for previous and older simulators like FS9 and FSX has made a return for the second time into Italy and after a long break they have made a surprise release for P3D. After a dry spell between their previous P3D, FSX and FS9 release of Lamezia Terme, they have now surprised the P3D World with a new piece of work of Crotone which is now Available exclusively for P3Dv5. Crotone Aeroporto Pitagora is a is a minor Italian domestic airport serving Crotone in Calabria. The airport is served mainly by Ryanair which usually hosts their B737-800 aircrafts into the airport, with destinations such as Bergamo, Bologna, Treviso, Turin in Italy and Weeze Airport in Germany. Sky Alps also served the airport with flights to Rome’s Fiumicino Airport. The airport has one 2000m runway (17/35) and a sizeable remote parking area capable
to handle a Ryanair rush of flights.

Airport Features

The BDOaviation product a simple yet interesting style of representation of the airport a fully modeled airport with all major airport buildings with high resolution textures, High detail photo scenery, fully detailed taxiways and runways, Custom made lines, taxiway and taxi lights and Custom ground texture from satellite photos.
A major advantage to this product is also that it already includes built in ortho-imagery directly from the developer which is included in the product. The airport has a domestic vibe type of operation which is enabled by the light-colored asphalt and the up-to-date layout as of 2025.

Modelling and Texturing

After carefully examining the terminal and its features, BDOaviation have used a high-quality texture set and have modelled all the major airport buildings include the VOR which is modeled and located on the right side of the airport when landing in a 35 direction.
Undoubtedly, such airports are missing the P3D world. These airports present an interesting challenge on the RNP approach which a forceful backtrack all the way to the end of the runway which just gives a further chance to see the entire airport which is not too large in size given that the airport scenery is very well detailed and the terminal and building textures are of excellent quality. The modelling of the airport buildings is of top quality which is a standard with BDOaviation. Given that this airport only consists of remote aprons with no Jetways, the real-world Crotone Airport gives this interesting vibe which makes it such a challenging and fun approach to fly into especially that the coastal part of the foot of the Italian Calabria region is very well surrounded with mesh and autogen addons such as ORBX Global and even FCscenery which is a good match for this part of Italy – more details can be found here.

Final Feedback

In conclusion, Crotone has been a surprise release for the P3D community especially with the long hiatus the BDOaviation has taken. BDO is known for their high-quality releases and widely versed catalogue with recent releases such as Phuket and Davao. Although to be fair, the release may not bring a high interest this airport does indeed serve its own unique purpose of filling the low-cost European void. Hence at this stage all projects are welcome to be released and its great to see various developers still supporting P3D.
I am looking forward to their next release and I really do hope it’s a remake of their Phuket, Jeddah or Bali sceneries which were previously released a while back! This indeed is a Job very well done to BDOaviation team for such a pleasant and nice wonder release of Crotone Airport!

Review by Nadeem Z