Transfer between Milan airports: Malpensa - Linate

Take The Shuttle, Man

Since you mention 5 people plus luggage my advice would be to aim directly for your destination airport (Linate), regardless of how long your layover might be. I'm thinking that from a practical standpoint the last thing you want to do is roam around a foreign city attempting to kill time whilst hauling around luggage and trying to keep 2 yougsters under control. :) To this purpose, the most direct transport - i.e. the Malpensa Shuttle you mentioned - is in my opinion your best option in terms of practicality. In terms of speed you can imagine the Malpensa Shuttle being only slightly slower than a taxi, since coaches must abide to slower speed limits, assuming that the driver does in fact follow them. Your journey time is of 1h10 to 1h30 depending on the bus you take. The price calculation by Guido is correct at the time of writing. For more information here is a link to the official webpage with the ticket prices.

A Ride into the City

For completeness sake note that you can get from Malpensa to Linate by going through Milan by public transport. First things first you'll have to reach the city, be it with the Shuttle (10 x 3 + 5 x 2 = 40 EUR) or with the Malpensa Express train (30 + 12 = 42 EUR) (30 is the family ticket for 2 adults + 2 children up to 18 years old).

Once you are in Milano, be it at Centrale or Cadorna train stations, you'll need to purchase an urban single fare ticket (1.5 x 5 = 7.5 EUR at the time of writing) and find a way to get to a bust stop served by line 73 or X73 (the express service to the airport). Personally I suggest the San Babila stop since it's central and served by the metro. Hence from Centrale you'll take Line 3 (the yellow one) towards San Donato, get off at Duomo and change for Line 1 (the red one) towards Sesto 1o Maggio FS, and get off at San Babila. From Cadorna you'll just need to get on Line 1 (the red one) towards Sesto 1o Maggio FS, and get off at San Babila. Once you are there look for the metro exit on Corso Europa, since that's where the 73 or X73 buses depart from.

Total cost for this journey into the centre of Milan would be:

• Malpensa Shuttle to Centrale: 40 + 7.5 = 47.5 EUR
• Malpensa Express to Cadorna: 42 + 7.5 = 49.5 EUR

Total time for this journey would be:

• Malpensa Shuttle to Centrale: 50 + 20 + 41 = 111 minutes
• Malpensa Express to Cadorna: 29/36 + 20 + 41 = 90/97 minutes depending on if you take the direct train to Cadorna or not

Yes either journey seems to be cheaper than taking the Shuttle all the way. At the cost of sounding repetitive I will say that in my opinion it's not worth saving a couple euros opting for a journey that is either as long or slightly longer but ever more tedious.

Get the shuttle, man.

How about ATM's Journey Planner?

Just for kicks you can try to run a journey search from Malpensa to Linate using ATM's very own journey planner (disclaimer: as a tool it's horrifyingly non-intelligent, as you would expect any blunt path optimisation algorithm to be). The tool does suggest walking the 38000-something meters separating Malpensa from Rho, and from there taking two metro lines until Lambrate, leaving you 5050-something meters to walk to reach Linate. You simply can't make this stuff up:

In hindsight this might be perfect to kill off that long 9-10 hour layover you mentioned.