@ Otterman, I think you are missing the point in the whole thing.
NOONE will invest in Alitalia, a compleatly new company will be created. Its more or less the same like with Swissair or Sabena, they transferred everything in Crossair and DAT, here everything will be transferred in a new company.
This has been done before and will be done again.
I agree with you, that Alitalia should have been bankruped many years before, while other ital. airlines went bust, Alitalia received a lot of money from the gov. ... not realy fair.
Anyway, we are talking about 18.000 jobs from which more than 15.000 will be saved. Also, think about the situation if Alitalia stopps tomorrow, who will provide the sevice for the domestic routes? I dont think that easyjet will start flying from AHO, CAG,BLQ, etc to FCO or MXP.
What would you say if BA, AF or LH goes bust tomorrow, more than 20.000 people lossing their jobs and the gov. just says "Well, thats life!"
Anyway, all this should have been done 4-5 years ago, but we also know why it hasnīt.
And just a last thing, AF received a lot of money from the gov. in the nineties, while companies like AOM, AirLib etc went bust. The french gov. setup this big company of AF which is now able to buy KLM, Alitalia etc. and they got much more money from the gov. than Alitalia did.