On Mon, 29 Feb 2016, Jesper Lauridsen wrote:

Yes, except that Malpensa is an aborted major airport. And hotels I was
aware of were displaced towards Gallarate and the motorway.

How is it "aborted"? It's the second largest airport in Italy, as big
as Linate and Bergamo put together. It does seem like the major
airport in the region.

It is an aborted hub, compare the flight it has now and it had some 10
years ago. Alitalia in all its various re-incarnations has always been
excessively romano-centric, has been unable to support a second
intercontinental hub in Italy, but has been quite able to discourage
other companies in doing it. Also an hub requires feeders, but feeders
require passengers. And no passengers will seriously fly from Turin,
Genoa, Bologna or Venice to Milan if they intend to come to Milan, while
those needing an intercontinental connection are too few. And they'd
prefer to fly to Paris, Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam. And the same
applies to the Milanese flying from much closer Linate.

Some major infrastructure work (road? rail?) ... around the airport.

It could be the extension or the railway to T2, the Y-junction, or
X-junction or Z-junction (I always forget). Or some additional
contested motorway ... the Region likes to build new motorways which
are too expensive and nobody takes (google for BreBeMi :-( ).

In the end I shouldn't have worried. The stops were shown on a big board
at the terminal stop and 3 other passengers on the bus (i.e. half) were
also going to Case Nuove.

Good for you. I am glad everything ran smoothly.

I don't think a free shuttle bus running between two airport terminals
will show up in a timetable database.

It depends on the kind of authorization it has from the Region. It is
unlikely that a shuttle inside the airport has stops outside !

If it ran inside the airport, Terminal 2 passengers arriving by train
at Terminal 1 would have to check in there and go through security before
being shutlled to Terminal 2, which would defeat the point of having two
terminals.

By "inside the airport" I did not mean "air-side" (i.e. inside the
security area). I just mean inside the premises belonging to SEA. I
remember the coaches from Milan do connect T1 and T2 (in fact if one
leaves from T2, and early, the coach is more conveniente than the
train).

The point of having two terminals is historical. T2 is the old airport
terminal in use until ~2000, and T1 is the new "MXP 2000".