In the Milan metropolitan area, Easyjet is omnipresent at Malpensa Airport. With Terminal 2 you can even use a handling complex more or less exclusively. But: The carrier wants to continue to grow at the inner-city Linate Airport.

Easyjet is already operating flights from Linate, but they want far more than they are allowed to. This is because the carrier has fewer takeoff and landing rights than necessary for the ambitious program. For this reason, the position is being taken regarding the planned entry of Lufthansa and Ita Airways.

It is highly likely that the German and Italian airlines will have to release so-called slots at Milan-Linate Airport. These formally go back to the regulator, who then has to reassign them to competitors. Easyjet hopes that if the worst comes to the worst, they can get hold of as many as possible.

However, the allocation of take-off and landing rights does not necessarily mean that flights will actually begin. As part of the transition from Alitalia to Ita Airways, numerous slots have already had to be returned. That was back then Ryanair is also successful and has come into possession of the Linate take-off and landing rights, which are considered valuable. In contrast to its competitor Wizz Air However, they never started flights from the inner-city airport, but instead handed them back to the regulator. Easyjet, on the other hand, uses the slots.

Easyjet CEO Johan Lundgren told Reuters News that they wanted to have a piece of the cake this time too and wanted to significantly expand their presence in Linate. In his opinion, this makes sense and this was explained accordingly in a statement to the EU Commission. At the moment it is still completely unclear how the competition authority will actually decide in the matter of Lufthansa/Ita Airways.