Milan airport in systems chaos

Systems malfunction and poorly trained staff are being blamed for the chaos that surrounded Sunday's opening of the new West Terminal of Milan's Malpensa international airport.

The airport was closed down for half an hour on Monday. Almost 200 flights have been cancelled since Sunday, with many more rerouted. Those passengers which have made their connections have had to suffer lengthy delays and the real danger of losing their luggage.

A spokesman for Societa Esercizi Aeroportuali (SEA) - the organisation which runs Milan's Malpensa and Linate airports - said blame for the fiasco could be shared "fifty-fifty" between system malfunction and human error. He admitted that many of the personnel problems could be put down to drafting staff in from Linate airport at the last minute. "They were not used to working with the systems. So when things started to go wrong, they just stood there - there was no one to tell them where to go."

The technical problems led to passengers being guided to the wrong gates, and a malfunction of the baggage handling system. Telephone lines also went down on Sunday. The spokesman emphasised that the problems were software-based, not due to hardware malfunction. Both software and hardware were supplied by "a variety of companies", with some development done in-house by SEA.

"Airport systems are always going wrong. There is always some problem that staff need to be able to work around. But in this case, they just weren't able to do so - they had no experience of working with these systems in live conditions," he said.

He added that the problems were compounded by the tight time slots allocated to flight take-offs and landings, causing a backlog. "It was a domino effect," he said.

The SEA spokesman claimed most of the technical glitches have now been fixed, although there are still problems surrounding the baggage system. "Normal service should be resumed by Sunday or Monday, with the new terminal reaching its full capacity within a couple of weeks."

"The main priority now," he concluded, "is to get the staff fully trained up in using the new systems."