A new masterplan to expand Malpensa, but without anu third take-off strip

Malpensa can increase up to 2030 without any third take-off strip.The new Masterplan of Sea, the management society, says that, and it also opens a confrontation with the territory starting from the guide-lines: among the central elements,the renunciation to the third runway and the reduction from 330 hectares to 60 hectares of the airport expansion area, which is a very disputed junction. “We do not need a third take-off strip because we already have had some improvements thanks to the Enav research that will guarantee growth by avoiding consuming the ground” as the president of Sea, Pietro Modiano, explained.

What does this mean? There will be no third take-off strip, but the objective to increase the number of passengers up to 32.5 billions of passengers (and a billion of tons of goods). For example, the investments are concentrated on the creation of new taxiways to provide access to the two take-off strips that already exist. With new connections it will be possible to improve the access to the take-off strips and to spend less time between one movement (take off and landing) and the next one. “With these organizative changes we get a significative rise of the capacity which allows us to avoid opening a third take-off strip until 2030”. If the actual capacity is about 69 movements per hour and the supposed one with the third take-off strip was about 108, the goal of the new masterplan is to get 78 movements per hour.

The old plan was not only about the passengers and the new take-off strip,but also about the investment in the logistic sector.  And here the change of objective is decidedly less radical, but substantial by the numeric point of view: in fact it goes from 330 to 60 hectares of expansion (in the area occupied by via Gaggio) .”For the development of the cargo  up to 2030 we think that sixty hectares in the southern part would be sufficient,” as Modiano continues to explain. In the south of the airport, the area between the road 336 and the actual boarder of the terminal: a more reduced portion of woodland than the last project that planned to use a wider area. The scenario also expects the deviation of the Provincial Road 14, “Molinelli street” in Lonate Pozzolo-Vizzola.

Beyond the numbers and the merits, the retirement of the plan the last year and the new proposal of today are significative: Modiano who was elected president after 2013, is somewhat free to recognise the wrong choice he did with the last Masterplan, that was born in a total different contest and that arrived in the end, in it’s retirement in 2014. The president of Sea says that he will pass from a too unilateral approach to a wider dialog with the territory, that accepts also two definite European directions about the consent of the public works’ development. “We do things well, we will surely pass the exam” concluded Modiano, who said that the first meeting has been very positive. Meanwhile, Modiano values the choices that were made as the best in front of a contest that, globally speaking, has changed a lot in a few years, and than Malpensa in an articular way: “it is not a renunciation due to a new environmental sensibilization, which there has always been and never lacked. It is instead the correct solution on the profile of the investment and of the objectives of efficiency, in the new scenario of traffic and organisation. The renunciation to the third take-off strip in a medium term is not to be seen as the effect of resignation: we do not resign. We were worried about an irreversible decline, so we worried the more for the Lupi law, but today there are different responses that make us think in a more positive way when we see the numbers and the investments that the enterprises are getting”. The goal for 2030 is fixed at 32.5 billions of passengers, more than the 49.5 billions that the old plan expected and that was based in the scenario of Alitalia pre-dehubbing and before the economical crisis.