Nine major European airlines have complained to the European Commission over Italian Government demands that all services on routes carrying fewer than 2 million passengers a year be transferred from Milan Linate airport to Milan/Malpensa 2000, starting from October 1998.
Air France, British Airways, Iberia, KLM, Lufthansa, Olympic, Sabena, SAS and Tap Air Portugal claim that they are being discriminated against by the Italian transport ministry because it has allowed Alitalia to continue operating to its Rome hub from Linate, while denying them the ability to serve their own hubs from Linate.
Alitalia's rivals fear that a move to Malpensa 2000 will result in the loss of substantial numbers of Italian long-haul passengers which they now feed through Linate to their own hubs. Several international carriers, principally from Japan and the USA, already operate from Malpensa. With Alitalia also starting to use the airport as its northern hub, the protesting airlines expect Italian passengers to use direct services from the airport rather than feed into hubs such as Amsterdam Schiphol.
The airlines are also complaining that new transport links to an expanded Malpensa will not be ready in time. The airport, which handled 3.1 million passengers in the first seven months of this year, compared with Linate's 10.8 million, will not have a rail link with central Milan until 2002. The Government claims that road links will be ready by the time the new Malpensa 2000 terminal becomes fully operational in June.
An alliance between Alitalia and its local rival Air One has been dissolved even before it became operational. The codeshare was due to start on two routes on 1 November. No reason has been given for the termination.
Source: Flight International
