di Leonard Berberi
After Alitalia abandoned Malpensa, SEA spent years courting foreign airlines one by one. Milan used to be a stopover. Now the world is coming for the destination — and the airport’s CEO is betting everything on it
He had barely finished celebrating the flawless execution of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics — hundreds of thousands of travellers moved in and out without a hitch — when Armando Brunini, chief executive officer of SEA, the company that operates Milan’s Linate and Malpensa airports, found himself facing three crises at once: the closure of one of Malpensa’s two runways for resurfacing, the outbreak of war in the Persian Gulf, and the full rollout of the Entry-Exit System for non-EU citizens, which has triggered lengthy queues at airports across the continent.
“I’d say that in this industry I’ve seen it all by now,” Brunini says with a smile, speaking during a long conversation at SEA’s offices beside the Linate terminal. “But every crisis passes, because this company’s fundamentals are solid.” In 2025, the company — in which the City of Milan holds a majority stake (54.81%), alongside 2i Aeroporti (45.01%) — closed the year with 42.3
