TRAFFIC RECORDS CONTINUE TO TUMBLE AT MILAN MALPENSA
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Traffic records continue to tumble at Milan-Malpensa Airport (MXP), with the Italian gateway now having delivered 48 consecutive months of passenger growth.
In the rolling 12-month period ending June 30, the SEA operated gateway handled 25.7 million passengers.
These impressive results mean that MXP has exceeded the pre-dehubbing traffic record by more than two million passengers.
“In the last 10 years the number of travellers using MXP has increased by 44%,” states Andrea Tucci, the airport’s vice president of aviation business development.
“Remarkably this has been achieved with just a 6% rise in aircraft movements.”
Throughput figures for the first six months of 2019 are also at a record level, with just under 12.5 million passengers being handled at MXP during the first haslf of the year.
“This +10% year-on-year growth between January and June is as a result of 30 new services and a total of 130 additional weekly flights in 2019,” adds Tucci.
“MXP’s route network is expanding and the airport now serves 200 destination in 77 nations, making Malpensa ninth in the world in terms of country markets served by hubs, ahead of airports like Doha, Munich, Brussels and Rome.”
Looking just at MXP’s June traffic results, 2.49 million passengers passed through the facility, representing a 11% spike in monthly throughput.
Tucci says: “June 2018 was the airport’s record sixth month of the year, but this has now been replaced by June 2019.”
Routes to new destinations like Sal from Cabo Verde Airlines, as well as Stavanger and Bergen from SAS which all commenced in June have contributed to the extraordinary traffic figures.
Commenting on MXP’s airline portfolio, Tucci is bullish about the airport’s offer. “Seven of the top 10 best airlines in the world, as awarded by SkyTrax, take off from Malpensa.”
SEA, however, is aware that the remainder of 2019 will be challenging for the airport as the city’s downtown Linate Airport temporarily closes on 27 July until 27 October for runway maintenance.
“We are investing around €18 million to adapt Malpensa’s infrastructure and operating systems to welcome additional traffic from Linate,” explains Tucci.
“The check-in, Schengen gates and baggage sorting areas are being adapted to accommodate the surge in traffic, with a taxiway also being temporarily converted to an apron.
“MXP is going to host in its peak season a 30% increase in capacity that, once the flights return to Linate, can easily be replaced by new carriers and flights thanks to the residual hub capacity in Milan that is not easy to find at many other European gateways.”