Malpensa Airport

Malpensa Airport

Milano Malpensa Airport "City of Milan" (IATA: MXP, ICAO: LIMC), former "Aeroporto Città di Busto Arsizio" is the largest airport of Milan, northern Italy. The first industrial airport was opened in 1909 by Giovanni Agusta and Gianni Caproni to test their prototipes, near the Cascina Malpensa, an old farm. The civil flight airport was then opened in 1948, during war reconstruction, to serve the northern area of Milan. Until recently, it was a major hub for Alitalia, but now serves as a hub for long-haul flights and low cost carriers. It is located 40 kilometres (25 mi) northwest of central Milan, Italy. It is one of 3 airports in the Milan metropolitan area.

The airport is in the Province of Varese, within the communes of Cardano al Campo, Somma Lombardo, Casorate Sempione, Ferno, Lonate Pozzolo, Samarate, and Vizzola Ticino. The airport is connected to Milan by the Milano-Varese highway as well as by the "Malpensa Express" train starting from the Milan Cadorna railway station (LeNord regional railways) and taking about 29–36 minutes. It is also connected to Linate Airport by a scheduled bus service and by Milan's local transportation. The Milan airport system has a third international airport, Orio al Serio Airport, which serves low-cost traffic.

Malpensa was the 21st busiest airport in Europe in terms of passengers, handling 18,947,808 passengers in 2010 and 19,291,427 in 2011. As of early 2008, Malpensa remains the top Italian airport in terms of international traffic, together with Rome Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport in terms of total passengers. As far as hub transit passengers are concerned it is also the second airport in Italy after Rome, according to ASSAEROPORTI traffic data. It is also the leading air freight gateway to Italy. Malpensa serves a population of over 15 million inhabitants.

EasyJet has a dedicated Terminal (T2) and Malpensa is the company's biggest base outside the UK.

In 2008 Lufthansa announced plans to create its first Hub outside Germany, and its fourth European hub, at Milan Malpensa airport. In October 2008, Lufthansa set up its Italian division, Lufthansa Italia. Operations commenced on 2 February 2009, and ceased on October 30, 2011 as Lufthansa abandoned plans to create a hub at Malpensa airport.

Malpensa has two terminals and a third runway has been announced, with completion set for 2012. There is also a dedicated cargo terminal called "CargoCity", which currently handles over 410,000 tons of yearly traffic.