The paradox of Malpensa, Americans and Brazilians jump the queue Italians NO: Government solve the problem (not only for the Olympics)
The Christmas spirit has arrived at Malpensa, but if as a gift to Santa Claus you asked not to make [...]
MXP
The spirit of Christmas has arrived at Malpensa, but if as a gift to Santa Claus you asked not to stand in line at border control, you had better make your peace: Santa Claus does not exist.
In this article:
Post Covid passengers have returned to flying, companies have decided to focus on Italy as never before, and Malpensa is for all intents and purposes the number one airport in Italy.
A uniqueness in the world we could say, because. is not the one in the capital and has no flagship company and yet it continues to grow e More and more carriers announce new routes to MXP.
There is one though as big as a house And it's the issue of border control, sure automatic turnstiles have arrived, but those who have not returned are the Polaria officers who would be several dozen fewer than pre-pandemic.
A problem that politics (almost) never sees
Normally we see politicians, left or right, getting indignant especially if they can blame their government opponent.
The peculiarity of this issue is that politicians have, within airports, the Ceremonial route i.e., a kind of ultra fast track that we frequent flyers can only dream about, and so Ministers, mere Congressmen and wives in tow, are not often aware of the issue because they have queue-jumping.
Please avoid saying "third world airport"
More and more of our readers are sharing with us their photos of crazy queues at Malpensa and everyone (or almost everyone) is picking on SEA, which is the company that runs Linate and Malpensa airports.
Those who say these things only happen in Italy evidently fly poorly or have selective memories. Of course those who are used to flying in the EU or on the short haul may also be right.
But if you fly to New York, Thailand or Japan. one should have the intellectual honesty to say that things abroad are no different, then there are countries like Singapore or the United Arab Emirates where, once you get off the plane, it takes you longer to reach the controls than to get through them, but they are very rare commodities.
Gates also need to be manned
One of the criticisms that the common person outside in the queue is that "turnstiles" are not turned on, but what the traveler ignores is that, by Italian law, each automatic gate must still be manned, this means that there has to be a Polaria officer for every X turnstiles, and this leads us to chronic understaffing.
The other problem is that the gates must be "programmed" based on the type of passport to be checked, so it is not possible to handle them for all passports indifferently.
True at Fiumicino it happens less often
Italy's other major port of call, number one in terms of traffic, is that of Rome Fiumicino and what happens at Malpensa in Rome does not happen with the same frequency.
The reason is partly structural, the checkpoint area underwent the recent renovation has become more comfortable and spacious, thus also making the queue less "emergency" when it occurs and partly because there is a lack of (less) PS staff here.. There are (almost) enough agents to open the counters, all the turnstiles and all the inbound and outbound stations, so the queue occurs at particular peak times, but less than at MXP.
The paradox of the entry/exit system: others no longer queue up
Then there is the news in recent months. As is well known, Europe has said goodbye to the stamp on passports, but more importantly has activated the entry/exit system a few months ago which allows citizens of certain nationalities to do all the paperwork at totems and then go through security checks as if they had Telepass.
Yesterday for the first time at Malpensa I noticed this situation where. Americans, Brazilians, or Australians, to name a few enabled passports, outnumbered everyone else on the left without even putting on the blinker, while we Europeans in the middle row and all the rest of the world on the outer row were queuing up.
The paradox then is that Europeans queue when they arrive, for example in the U.S., and they queue again when they return home. Americans do not queue when they come to us and do not queue when they return home either.
In conclusion
We hope all stakeholders will be able to do their part, and give us a Christmas present, But not only in the run-up to the Olympics.
Malpensa grows, brings wealth to Italy by attracting more and more tourists, but then the business card is what the photos above show, but for once I see it instead as an Italian, cuckolded and cuckolded, arriving in NY and standing in line for 2 hours (when the MPC does not work) and as many when he comes home, it doesn't seem right.
