Regards KL/AF I thought it was the other way round? KL doing quite well and propping up the struggling AF side?
It is now; not sure of the exact facts at the time of the merger/takeover. What was the case is that AF was bankrupt well before and the French government squeezed Brussels to allow 3 tranches of conditional investment to save AF. Meanwhile KLM was profitable. Then, after the 'saving/resurrection of AF, somehow AF managed to become the senior partner in the group, but now KLM perhaps wishes it could jettison the dragging weight of AF.
One question is why the Alitalia TEAM project didn't succeed. This was started under scrutiny from Brussels in 1995. There could be no expansion, as were the plans, and costs had to be reduced and the company restructured. Obviously it didn't work. The events of 2009 were unknown to me, but it sounds very plausible within Italy and the whole financial industry.
How Swissair ever rose from the shoes is another mystery that perhaps only the financiers know the answer. From experiences in my time at AZ during the Team project I suspect many of the Italian travelling public might say good riddance. It will be a vacuum to fill; being mixture of long & short haul. Might those routes be carved up and 2 separate companies formed, or will the other EU short-haul operators move in and pick the bones. Who will fill the long-haul? Will those routes be serviced from the other end, or spoke/hub into the north EU airports?