Flight within the EU

I like to have 2 hours for domestic flights. We had one from Florence to Paris this fall and they were running all flights through the same line and there were over 100 in line when we arrived. We were shocked. I had only arrived two hours early for this early flight because someone on this site said that this airport is time consuming. I would have though an hour plenty for a domestic flight. I might not have made the plane. No idea how your airline runs things at FCO but I'd at least see what your airline advices. I am very conservative about flight times and arrivals at the airport and this has saved me a couple of times when things were unexpected.

Airlines suggest 2 hours prior, but 90 min should work. MXP T1 is not too busy.

If you look at departures at MXP, you will see that the earliest flight is 5:00 am, but they don't start in quantity until 5:45 - and those tend to be the discount airlines. It looks like your flight to Paris is the first Air France flight of the day, so if you arrive too early, the AF desk may not be open - assuming you are flying AF.

Any checked bags? If so, closer to the 2 hrs early would be my comfort zone.

If you are already checked in and have no checked luggage (so can go straight to security), than 90 minutes is fine. Otherwise, I would go two hours early.

Most low cost flights out of MXP, namely EasyJet which has a hub there, depart from T2, totally separate from T1 on the northside of the airport (that was the original terminal of that airport before the late 1990s expansion of Malpensa 2000). So I wouldn't worry too much about the many EasyJet flights departing in the morning from Malpensa. There are probably fewer than 20 flights departing from T1 between 6 and 8. MXP was rebuilt 25 years ago to be the main hub of the now defunct Alitalia and at the time the brand new Terminal 1 was handling a much larger volume of passengers than today. It's been 5 years since I flew out of MXP (pre-covid) and it was not crowded at all. I don't think things are dramatically worse now. There were 250,000 air traffic movements in 2000, only 214,000 in 2024.

There were 250,000 air traffic movements in 2000, only 214,000 in 2024.

Roberto has a point, but I wonder if staff has been reduced to reflect the lower passenger load, so processing time remains the same. Or are the unions able to keep staffing levels unchanged despite the reduced work load?

Thank you all for your input.
Commenting on Roberto’s input, I had been previously booked on KLM and they changed my flight and it is now out of Linate , therefore again reducing the number of flights out of Malpensa. I have booked on Air France instead out of Malpensa due to Hotel & train reservations already booked.

Traditional airlines don't like Malpensa too much, due to the long distance from the city, which discourages the use by business travelers (the airlines' preferred customers), who prefer LIN. ITA Airways has pulled out completely of MXP and operates flights only out of LIN. MXP is now mostly low cost (but Easyjet is only in T2) and some intercontinental flights which can't fly out of LIN due to the shorter runway. My experience at T1 is dated to before covid and the terminal was very underutilized compared to the peak days for the first few years after it opened in 1998, when Alitalia moved the hub there from Fiumicino. But after Alitalia pulled out of MXP in 2008 and transferred the hub back to FCO, the place has not yet recovered the lost business. It might have picked up a bit after Covid, but largely thanks to the growth of the low cost, which operate primarily at T2. Last few times I used it, it was not crowded at all, not sure if things have changed in the last year or so after the pandemic.