Ciao Dottore!
Well, there has been a lot of speculation about it, but personally I don't see it coming soon. The Italian network is not strong enough yet and the market very competitive. I am sure there will be more cooperation with Star Alliance partners that are also flying to MXP, but flying long-haul for LHI is still distant future I would say. Question is also were to get thebig aircraft and I don't think it is worth having only one or two based in MXP, when passengers can be transferred to one of the other hubs of LH in Europe (FRA, MUC, ZRH, BRU, VIE, DUS) easily. Connections to these hubs are very good and LH has a pretty good market share in MXP with all its sister companies, so I think they will rather try to get more out of the Italian market (with Air One now flying with Alitalia) by connecting more cities within the country (this season Olbia and Palermo are new and doing very good, more frequencies to Napoli and then there is also Air Dolomiti) and maybe connect some of the less frequented cities to the network. For example the daily flight to Bari was the cities only connection to the Star network, but now we also flights from/to MUC, so it certainly was a door opener. Charter also plays a minor role on weekends (Split, Ibiza, Copenhagen, Amsterdam are examples).
The overall question is how (if) the airline can grow in Europe together with all the other LH companies and where to get the aircraft. As I said, they are all from Germanwings and Lufthansa and those airlines surely need them themselves with the economy going up again. Will be interesting to see!
Any more questions are welcome. I will be in Milano next week, if anyone would like to get in personal contact and have lunch or so
