There are several major problems the Italians faced in this area:

First, they could never produce a sufficent quantity of their best designs. Most aviation units had to soldier on with older obsolesent or obsolete designs putting them at a disadvantage against their opponets.

Next, the Italians faced a fuel shortage greater than the Germans did. This made sustained large scale operations difficult.

Also, their airforces had nearly zero cooperation with their navy. This made both services far less effective in the naval war in the Mediterrainian. At one early battle with the Royal Navy the Italian airforce did show up in strength, half an hour late and then bombing their own ships but they were there....