Take the lucrative international air-traffic market, add a still unfinished 13-year-old Italian government plan for the creation of a "hub" airport, add again the vested interests of nine European national carriers and what do you have?
Firstly confusion, secondly tensions between the European Commission and the Italian government and, thirdly, a compromise solution that will probably leave many dissatisfied at least until the year 2000.
All being well, Italy's ongoing dispute with the European Commission about its plans for Milan's new international airport, Malpensa 2000, will be resolved in the next week. If Italian Transport Minister Claudio Burlando (finally) comes up with a plan acceptable to the Commission, then a summer of wrangling between Brussels and Rome, between Mr Burlando and EU Transport-Commissioner Neil Kinnock may not have been in vain.
The £1 billion Malpensa 2000 development project was originally approved in 1985. Both commercial logic and safety considerations had long since prompted a move from Milan's existing international airport at Linate. The safety considerations relate to the fact that Linate is extremely close to the city of Milan while its single, short runway is stretched to the maximum to deal with high density air-traffic. By comparison, Malpensa is 53 kilometres from Milan and equipped with several runways.
The commercial considerations relate to Milan's pivotal position in northern Europe. Remember, Milan is not Rome, it is not in the Mediterranean but rather nestles in the foothills of the Alps and as such provides a natural "hub" point for central and northern European traffic. (The word "hub" is crucial to understanding the Malpensa dispute. In air-traffic parlance, a "hub" means a national carrier's main airport, the one to which it feeds onbound traffic, especially onbound transcontinental traffic). In the past, Milan (and of course Italian state carrier Alitalia) missed out on much of this "hub" or onbound market for the simple reason that the Linate runway is too short for the larger type of plane used for transcontintental flights. With the arrival of Malpensa 2000, Alitalia and SEA (the company which runs both Malpensa and Linate) were poised to take perhaps the largest share of a market conservatively estimated by SEA president Giuseppe Bonomi to be worth between £1.25 and £1.5 billion per annum. Such an increased Alitalia "take" will probably hurt BA and Lufthansa most of all since transcontinental travellers departing from northern Italy now often use London or Frankfurt connections.
Minister Burlando's original plans (a 1996 decree) for the new airport envisaged a total transfer of flights and carriers from Linate to Malpensa on October 25th. Total, that is, with the exception of any airline which flew more than two million passengers per year out of Linate. And guess which airline comes into the latter category? Why, yes, Alitalia.
In practical terms, the original Burlando decree would have meant that Alitalia would have retained its highly profitable Milan-Rome (Linate-Fiumicino) shuttle while all foreign carriers would have been obliged to move all their flights to Malpensa.
At this point, nine other EU carriers (British Airways, Lufthansa, Air France, Iberia, Sabena, SAS, TAP, Olympic and Austrian Airlines) cried foul, appealing to the European Commission that the Burlando decree was in breach of EU market access legislation. In particular, the nine argued that since Alitalia used Fiumicino (Rome) as its main hub, it would be unfair to allow Alitalia sole use of Linate as a feeder for its hub.
Technically, the rival national carriers had a point. In practice, their complaints might well have been rejected, were it not for the problems related to the lack of adequate road and rail connections to Malpensa. And here we come to a sadly familiar Italian story. Even officials at the Transport Ministry admit that while those elements in the Malpensa development project that were originally assigned to the private sector (in particular the development of the airport itself) have been completed both on schedule and to state-of-theart airport standards, that not insignificant item left to public administration, i.e. transport infrastructure, has yet to be completed.
In effect, a (relatively high speed) rail link with Malpensa will not be ready until May or June of next year, while a truly highspeed rail link will become operative only in the year 2001. Furthermore, the autostrada link from Milan to Malpensa will not be completed until the year 2000 at the earliest. Which all means that if a consumer/traveller is faced with the choice between an easy 25-minute taxi ride from Milan city-centre to Linate and an hourand-a-half hike up a jammed autostrada to Malpensa, then Linate will probably be the favoured destination.
There may be truth in Minister Burlando's claims that national interests (British and German or BA and Lufthansa, if you like) played some role in Commissioner Kinnock's rejection of the original Burlando decree last month. It is equally true, though, that if the road and rail links had been up and running, then the EU would have much greater difficulty in ruling against a project which benefited from EU start-up funding. (Incidentally, both Italian Commissioners, Emma Bonino and Mario Monti, voted against the Burlando decree).
All is not lost, though. Minister Burlando vows that Malpensa 2000 will go ahead, opening on October 25th, albeit with a different timetable for the transfer from Linate to Malpensa. A complex compromise solution currently being devised in Rome may see carriers allowed to retain 3035 per cent of flights at Linate until such time as the road and rail connections to Malpensa have been updated and finished. (The fate of smaller carriers such as Aer Lingus which do not use intercontinental size planes and could therefore lobby to stay at Linate currently remains unclear).
