Business has been increasing at Italian business and general aviation (B&GA) airport Milano Linate. According to SEA Prime, which operates the Milano Prime FBOs, the lone business aviation service provider at both of the airports, it saw more than 16,700 B&GA operations at Linate through the first nine months of 2018, up 2.1 percent year over year, making it Italy’s top business airport and Europe’s fifth overall. SEA Prime is the subsidiary of SEA SpA that manages both Milan’s Linate and larger Malpensa Airports. 

“In the past few years, Milano has climbed rankings among the most visited European cities,” noted Chiara Dorigotti, SEA Prime’s general manager. “Milano, the business, design, and fashion hub in Italy represents not only an attraction for business traffic but for leisure and cultural visitors as well.”

By the end of the year, the company will have added new, dedicated VVIP lounges at its stylish Milano Linate Prime facility, bringing it to 3,200 sq ft of space for passengers and crew waiting to board their flights.

The company began its business aviation presence at Malpensa last year when it completed renovation on a 53,000-sq-ft former commercial hangar, and this past October it broke ground on the airport’s first FBO. According to Dorigotti, Milan Malpensa Prime will be a 1,400-sq-m/15,000-sq-ft facility located between the airport’s terminals. Currently, private aviation passengers have to be processed through terminal 2. Overall, the $4.65 million project will include the stylish state-of-the-art terminal, a new ramp, and a car park.

“The next project is the brand new B&GA terminal of Milano Prime at the intercontinental airport of Milano Malpensa opening in June 2019,” said Dorigotti. “We expect to attract a significant number of customers from the Middle East landing at Milano Malpensa with direct first-class services from Dubai and other cities in the Gulf.”

The company also recently inked an agreement with high-end Italian limousine services provider Worldwide Group, whose fleet features luxury cars from Mercedes-Benz and Mercedes-Maybach, and which hires carefully screened multilingual drivers.