Milan - Malpensa (MXP)

...a choice of airports in Milan – although there are two in the city, BA (and after the previous op, who else would I chose to fly with?) only fly to Malpensa from Manchester. A month later, wiser, more tanned, and a little richer, my job was over and I flew home.

Malpensa is often slagged off by seasoned travellers, especially when compared to Linate (Milan’s other airport), the latter of which has more facilities, a better ...
...Linate so I can’t comment. Milan has two terminals, and so puts it between Vienna and Manchester, two of the airports I’ve flown from since then.


* Terminal 1*

Opened in 1998 and able to handle around 25 million passengers each year this terminal has tons of parking spaces (we’re talking thousands, many of which are free) and a great, fast rail link to the city. It’s 8 minutes from Terminal ... more

If you put “mal pensa” into altavista’s translation page, and click on Italian to English, it gives you a rather unreasurring “badly it thinks” as it meaning. I know this because at the moment I'm testing MT packages - including Systran which powers Altavista - and having exhausted all the techo-babble test texts, I've moved onto the more interesting world of ops - tranlsating them out of English into a random lang and back again, just to see what happens.

Flying to Italy two days after my last A Level exam last year, I didn’t have a choice of airports in Milan – although there are two in the city, BA (and after the previous op, who else would I chose to fly with?) only fly to Malpensa from Manchester. A month later, wiser, more tanned, and a little richer, my job was over and I flew home.

Malpensa is often slagged off by seasoned travellers, especially when compared to Linate (Milan’s other airport), the latter of which has more facilities, a better location and is generally preferred. Still, I haven’t been to Linate so I can’t comment. Milan has two terminals, and so puts it between Vienna and Manchester, two of the airports I’ve flown from since then.

* Terminal 1*

Opened in 1998 and able to handle around 25 million passengers each year this terminal has tons of parking spaces (we’re talking thousands, many of which are free) and a great, fast rail link to the city. It’s 8 minutes from Terminal 2, and regular shuttle busses run between them. This terminal is home to both international and domestic arrivals, all of which are at street level (most handy when you’re loaded up with luggage as I inevitably am after a long stay abroad). Signs are in English, Italian and the universal language of pictures, and as with Vienna it’s hard to go wrong. Being situated in a lovely hot country, they have marble floors and air conditioning which are welcome relief if you’ve been on the go all day. What happens in winter when it snows I don’t know, so any one who does, please feel free to leave me a comment.

This terminal has an amazing number of public telephones – they really are all over - so you’ve no excuse for not ringing to let people know you’ve arrived safely. It was the terminal I flew from, and I found it quite ok. The shops were nice (varied stock depending on which shop you’re in is always a plus) and not too expensive. The food was not only edible, but quite delicious and cheap – what more can you ask for? I spent £1.50 on a 3 course meal (Zoë food, I grant you, but 3 courses none the less – and before you ask, only one of them contained chocolate) with a drink, something that costs you well over a fiver at Ringway.

As with Berlin’s Tegel airport, everything is near enough together so if you end up at the wrong end, it doesn’t really matter. This terminal is getting busier and busier, but the staff are as good as they can be, and very obliging. At the BA counter there was a huge group of school kids checking in, so they let me use the Business Class desk – how grown up and mature I’d have felt (I was 17, ok?) had I not been dressed in shorts and a halterneck….

* Terminal 2 *

Used for charter flights and some international and domestic services.

Didn’t fly from there, so don’t know. Sorry :-)

* Getting There *

Something I do know -

By Car - Take the A8 or A26 from Milan – takes around 50 mins.

Taxi - Journey time from central Milan is 50 mins again, fare approx L 130 000.

Train - The Malpensa Express (nice name, but it’s not quite Hogwarts) goes from the main station every 30 minutes from 5am to 11.10pm and the trip itself takes just over half an hour. Costs L 15 000 one-way.

Busses – leave from the main station every half an hour or so from around 5.30am, reducing to every hour over night. Again, costs L 15 000 one-way but remember to buy tickets in advance from the travel office just opposite.

From Linate to Malpensa there are 10 services daily between 6 am and 8pm, although the bus goes to Terminal 1 only, so you might need to get another to Terminal 2 if that’s where you need to be.

If you arrive at Malpensa and are heading away from Milan, there are regular busses to Turin, Genoa, Borgmanero, Novara, and Como among other places.

* Destinations *

Something I’m not entirely certain about. Manchester for sure. And London. Also, since the website lists Air China, Balkan Bulgarian Airlines, Continental Airlines, Egyptair, El Al Israel, South African Airways and VARIG Brazilian, I’m going to go out on a limb and say destinations most likely include China, Bulgaria, America, Egypt, Israel, South Africa and Brazil…

* Security *

Foreigners just don’t do it like us Brits, do they? As I said in my op on Vienna, Austrian security is pretty weak compared to ours. Malpensa’s is just as bad – less checking at all stages, with un-x-rayed carry-ons being allowed much later on into your trip. No doubt this will change, especially on flights heading out to the USA, but when I flew at least it was just begging for problems.

* Verdict *

Time to stop the slagging, me thinks. It’s an airport. It lets you get on planes and go places, and land there having travelled from another country. It has shops and restaurants. It has helpful staff. It is well laid out. It’s no where near as bad as people make it out to be. If you think 30 mins is a long time to get to an airport, then you’ve obviously never been on holiday with me. Try it next time you’re in the north of Italy – it is worth it. Who knows, you might even meet some, ahem, famous footballers....... 

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