Traffic records continue to tumble at SEA’s Milan Malpensa Airport (MXP) and the Italian gateway has now posted 48 consecutive months of passenger growth.
MXP’s June traffic results show that 2.49 million passengers passed through the facility, representing a 11 per cent spike in monthly throughput. Routes to new destinations like Sal from Cabo Verde Airlines, as well as Stavanger and Bergen from SAS which all commenced last month have contributed to the traffic figures.
Throughput figures for 1H 2019 are also at a record level, with just under 12.5 million passengers being handled at MXP during the first six months of the year. On a rolling 12-month period the airport has now handled 25.7 million passengers.
These 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 per cent,” said Andrea Tucci, vice president of aviation business development at SEA, “remarkably this has been achieved with just a 6 per cent rise in aircraft movements.”
“This 10 per cent 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,” added 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.”
The Milan airport system closed 1H 2019 with a total of 16.8 million passengers, an increase of 6.4 per cent compared to 2018, with Milan Linate having delivered 4.3 million passengers, down 3.9 per cent year-on-year. This result was due in a large part to the restructuring of both Alitalia and Air Italy at Linate, with the carriers’ major international business routes still undergoing a period of consolidation.
The remainder of summer 2019 is set to be challenging for SEA 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,” said 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,” concluded Tucci.
