Introduction

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Milan Malpensa Airport (LIMC) is an international airport serving Milan, Italy. Its yearly average of 26.1 million passengers makes it the second busiest in the country after Rome's Fiumicino. 

The airport's actual site has been part of aviation history for at least a century, with the first record dating back to 1910, when the Caproni brothers flew their Cal biplane. It was the first of many prototypes tested there, which led to an eventual upgrade to a proper airfield instead of just a farming patch where aircraft could land and take off.

It did not take long before Malpensa transformed from a mere testing airfield to a full-on manufacturing suite. Both Caproni and Giovanni Agusta built factories on the site, rapidly transforming it into the largest production center in the country.

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In the following decades, it hosted two squadrons of the Italian Air Force, taking a slight military turn. World War 2 had it occupied by the Germans upon its invasion, which invested heavily into improving the infrastructure for combat with its first concrete runway.

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World War 2 left the airfield in shambles, leading politicians and regional manufacturers to join forces and start a reconstruction effort. They aimed to transform it into an industrial fulcrum for Italy's post-war recovery. The main runway had been entirely restored and expanded, and a small wooden terminal was built to handle passengers and cargo.

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Commercial operations officially started in 1948, but Sabena (Belgium) was already flying a scheduled route a year prior. 

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In the early 1950s, the Municipality of Milan took control of the airport and, more so, of its operator (Società Aeroporto di Busto Arsizio), eventually renaming it Società Esercizi Aeroportuali SpA. Upon assuming full control, the new administrators decided to develop the airport as an international and intercontinental gateway, leaving Linate solely domestic.

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The late 1950s marked the construction of its new terminal and the substantial expansion of its two parallel runways, which, at 3,915 meters each, became the longest in Europe at the time. 

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Things were looking bright for Malpensa's future at first, but the 1960s brought a challenge and a half: major European carriers preferred to fly into Linate instead, which was closer to the city center, thus more inviting to passengers for that extra convenience. Malpensa had just a couple of intercontinental links, charter flights, and cargo. The decline was evident, nearing a 50% drop within five years. That remained the same for the next twenty years that would follow.

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In the 1980s, though, Linate began suffering the consequences of its own success. It had to handle 7 million passengers annually with a single runway and limited slots, and it was not possible to expand any further. It was Malpensa's time to shine again.

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The mid-1980s brought what Malpensa needed: a reorganization of the Milan airport system. Malpensa was designated as the center for all services covering northern Italy, and Linate would handle domestic and short-haul only. 

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A new terminal was built to keep up with the ever-increasing passenger traffic, and the government heavily invested in developing efficient connections to the city. The European Union provided 200 million euros to help out, as they considered it of the utmost importance to develop the Union.

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In the late 90s, Alitalia moved its hub from Rome Fiumicino to Malpensa, single-handedly adding nearly 500 movements and 42,000 passengers a day, rounding up at around 6 million at the end of the year (two million more than in the previous year). 

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The following year saw a record-breaking 16.9 million, and within a decade, it was nearing the 30 million mark. 

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The new passenger figures led the administration to launch a new development plan, encompassing a third pier for Terminal 1 and a third runway, estimated at 1.4 billion euros. Unexpectedly, though, Alitalia has decided to revert their hub to Fiumicino, resulting in a 20% drop in passenger traffic in 2008. The following year did not get any better, further tanking the numbers.

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The drop in passenger figures led to the operator going desperate and pulling several advertising stunts to spread Malpensa's word far and wide, which resulted in more than 30 new routes being added to the network.

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The 2010s also brought a major low-cost carrier into play: easyJet opened a base in Malpensa, basing more than twenty airplanes there and offering over 70 destinations across Europe. Ryanair, its main competitor, followed suit within a few years.

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In recent years, LCCs have been the airport's saving grace, with Wizz Air joining easyJet and Ryanair with a substantial route network. 

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Developed by David Rosenfeld and distributed by Aerosoft, the rendition promises a precise recreation of the airport, with detailed terminal buildings, high-quality custom objects, realistic night lighting, custom aerial imagery, VDGS, accurate terrain elevation mesh, and more.

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Installation

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The scenery is distributed via Aerosoft One and features a one-click install.

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First Impressions

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After roughly four years of waiting, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 simmers can finally fly into Malpensa. Given its national and international importance, one would wonder why it took so long, but it's finally available. Is it any good, though?

The route of choice was a quick hop from Frankfurt with a Lufthansa A320-214, bringing something different from the usual 738/777 review hops. Little did I know almost everything would be different.

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In hindsight, I should have checked the METAR before the flight, as it was definitely far from optimal for a review flight, where you are ideally supposed to be able to see everything properly to better judge texture and model quality. 

To put it bluntly, I could not formulate any first impression whatsoever as I could not see diddly squat, forcing me to perform my first autoland in 2024 (at least as far as I remember). 

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Bird box experience aside, I could finally see the ground upon vacating runway 35R and was not disappointed by what I saw: clear and sharp ground markings, making it relatively easy to navigate the fog toward_s stand 606, where the real aircraft had parked just a few hours prior.

With parking and deboarding out of the way, it was time to cheat a little and make the weather more tolerable for the drone camera routine, which is a must for my scenery reviews.

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Modeling / Texturing 

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The overall model quality, despite not being up to the highest standard (especially outside of the main terminal), strikes a good balance between acceptable visuals and performance. There are bits that might look like traveling right back to the P3D days and bits that look fairly up to par with what people expect from a mega airport in 2024.

Terminal 1, for example, has its main area fully modeled, but the boarding areas feature an image for its interior instead of an actual interior, and the passengers in the image often look too big in relation to the rest of the environment, heavily impacting the overall airside experience. On the other hand, the jetways look pretty good, with custom weathering further evidencing its 26 years of existence. 

The custom ground service equipment, albeit a bit blocky at times, does a great job at representing what you would find in the actual airport, with particular emphasis on the beloved wheeled orthopedic boot that was all the rage in the early 2000s: the mighty Fiat Doblö. My parents almost bought one back in the day to lug everyone around on holidays, but god had better plans in mind, and we ended up just strapping an extra seat in the baggage compartment of our SUV instead. 

On that Doblö note, it makes me wonder whether they are still so widely present at the airport in 2024, given that the specific model depicted is from before 2005, featuring Fiat's old blue logotype rather than the red one. Was that just carried over from the Prepar3d version, perhaps? 

Whether current or not, the ground service stuff and its inherent clutter are definitely custom-made and wholly present at all terminals, which is refreshing, given how common it is for developers to just use default SDK clutter rather than create their own.

The cargo area—which is of great importance given that Malpensa is the busiest cargo airport in Italy—is well represented, littered with crate clutter (with their correct logos and stuff, which is excellent). Freight dogs will not feel left out.

On the texturing side of things, aside from the boarding areas featuring a static image with massively sized passengers, it does not disappoint. While it is not up to the usual standard we are used to seeing with the likes of Jo Erlend, for example, it's not what I would call bad either.

Overall, they could have gone the extra mile in the detail aspect here and there, but the compromises warrant unusual smoothness given the airport's size. More on that later.

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Night Lighting 

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Malpensa truly shines in the night lighting: properly bright, both inside and out, which is pretty rare in MSFS. Most developers opt for slightly dimmer internal lighting, whereas Rosenfeld went for a very bright interior where you can see everything inside, as you would expect it to be. Super neat.

If the textures left a bit to be desired in some aspects, the night lighting certainly makes up for it, allowing for a super enjoyable nighttime experience around the main terminals and cargo area.

The taxiways and runways are decently lit and signaled, making it very hard to get lost at night (the airport's convenient layout also greatly helps).

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Performance 

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My Setup: 32 GB RAM DDR4, Ryzen 7 3700X, NVidia GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB, 3 TB SSD non-NVMe.

This is where the compromises start to pay off heavily, as they directly translate into better performance (if done right). This is clearly the case with Rosenfeld's Malpensa: nearly zero stuttering on approach and landing and a consistent framerate all across the board when moving around the airport with the drone camera. It's impressive for an airport of that size.

There is no stuttering, no sudden 99% GPU usage (indicating good work on LODding), and overall, it is as fluid as possible. 

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Conclusion 

For roughly $20.25 at the time of writing, David Rosenfeld's Malpensa is still a must-have for your European scenery roster even with some of its shortcomings, as the other alternative is absurdly subpar in comparison despite costing a bit less. While the airside experience could be better, the ground textures are great, the main terminal area looks impressive inside and out, and the performance is astonishing considering the airport's size.

The windows on the boarding area could be replaced by at least a parallax texture with proper object scaling inside, which would do wonders for the overall airside immersion, but that's just a detail at the end of the day. It takes away from the product's overall quality but does not discredit the good work in the other areas. 

As previously mentioned at the time of release, the scenery will eventually be ported to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (for free!).

A huge thank you to Aerosoft for providing us with a review copy!

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