You would be perfectly correct, Longhitter, if this were a serious attempt at a turn-around and profitable privatization carried out by well-intentioned businessmen, with an eye to re-building the company and eventually emerging stronger than before.
Unfortunately, AZ pilots have the sinking feeling, no the certainty, that this is just like every other "re-capitalization" and turn-around of the last 8 years or so. A farce, a charade useful to politicians and their banking buddies, that will result in even deeper debt and an even smaller company in a couple years time.
All you have to do is look at who's involved, and what they are doing. Among the other things they are trying to pull off: they are aiming to amalgamate Air One into AZ, and spin off that company' debt (and believe me they are even more in debt than AZ with respect to their size) into the "bad company" part of the maneuver that will ultimately be paid off by the taxpayer. Air One's huge debt is towards one of the banks which, lo and behold, is behind the CAI take-over bid. Bank gets its money back from taxpayer AND gets an airline to boot.
Another juicy tidbit (but there are dozens): the government decreed that the evaluation of AZ's fair market value was to be undertaken on CAI's behalf by another bank (Banca Leonardo I believe); they decided that the AZ marque, aircraft and slots were worth one million euro (I believe). Do a little research however and you discover that two of the "businessmen" behind CAI are Banca Leonardo associates. No surprise then that CAI are offering substantially less than AF was earlier in the year.
This is Italy, where "conflict of interest" is a SOP, the PM is basically a crook, two of our MPs are bona fide convicted criminals, and some thirty-odd more are under investigation (or maybe it's more, I can never remember). In this case it's us stupid pilots that are left holding the candle.
