Airlines’ fears mount over move to new Milan airport

Date: 18/11/1999

By Renée Cordes

EUROPEAN airlines have voiced concern that Milan's new Malpensa 2000 airport will not be ready to handle hundreds of additional international flights from next month, despite Italy's promises to make the necessary preparations in time.

More than 230 flights to and from Amsterdam, Birmingham, Frankfurt, London and Madrid are due to be moved from Milan's old Linate

terminal to the troubled Malpensa facility on 15 December. The remaining 230 international flights to and from non-European destinations are due to switch airports by mid-January.

Rome told the airlines concerned earlier this year that none of the international slots at Linate which they had been given for the 1998-99 winter season and the 1999 summer season would be reassigned to them after the end of October this year.

This sparked a storm of protest from eight carriers, which argued that they had not been given enough advance warning of the move to Malpensa and that the new airport was far from ready to handle millions of additional travellers. The Commission intervened and forced the Italian authorities to agree to delay the move until December.

However, some airlines are still unsatisfied with the pace of preparations for the transfer and are urging the Commission to demand another delay, until after the holiday season.

Christmas is traditionally the busiest time of the year for the travel industry, and will be complicated this year by the millennium changeover.

Sources at one of the airlines which complained about the original time-table for switching from Linate to Malpensa said this week that the company "still had its doubts" about the wisdom of carrying out the move next month. "We still see no reason why we have to do this a week before Christmas, which might only hurt our European customers," said one.

The airlines involved in the dispute - Air France, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Deutsche Lufthansa, Iberia, Olympic Airways, Sabena and Scandinavian Airline System (SAS) - also contend that completion of the necessary road and train links is still a long way off.

When the Italian authorities agreed this summer to postpone the move until December, they pledged to make a number of improvements to the airport infrastructure, including building more gates and installing new surveillance systems for aircraft on runways.

Commission officials say they believe that the Malpensa airport authorities are making progress on implementing these plans.

"It is moving along in the right direction," said one, although he added the date for the switchover could be pushed back yet again if the infrastructure was not ready. "Of course, if we find out that there is any substantial delay in the work, we would look again at the whole situation," he said.