Now reporting a six hundred million euro loan to Alitalia. When is the Italian government going to wake up and realise that this is money down the drain?

There was an opinion survey completed earlier in which 77% of those surveyed were opposed to the Italian Government 'loaning' any more money to the failed carrier.

About 15 years ago Alitalia was already in trouble. KLM invested some money (in the good old days) and tried to get them out of trouble. Later on AFKL did the same but last year Alitalia kicked their @sses because of Etihad was now in favor. Now finally they go down. Thanks to the Unions and poor management.
1650 would have lost their jobs and a salary cut for the rest. I wonder how many will lose their jobs and salary now. Just typical.

Alitalia have been a basket case for years. Quite how they have managed to hang on for so long is a miracle. A bit like Italy's banks. But my heart goes out to those who will lose their jobs as a result. As for their minority shareholder, who cares?

The raising of the loan to 600m euros is apparently to ensure the airline can definitely cover the summer and possibly until the next election. By deferring until after Italy votes, it avoids a piece of national infrastructure becoming a political football

It is in nobody's interest for Alitalia to collapse suddenly - if it's going to be liquidated (and I can see plenty of reason for an eventual liquidation) then much better for there to be some degree of control and predictability not only for the staff but also to ensure passengers can plan suitably rather than transport to/from/in Italy suddenly turning chaotic

I can cerainly understand why in a country which is so dependent on inbound tourism during the summer that the Govt would want Alitalia to survive until the end of October. Presumably Alitalia makes a large operating loss in winter but in summer maybe at least comes close to breaking even.
I can also understand why Rome wants Alitalia in a stable state for a few months so that the administrators have time to perform a full analysis of the company, give time for negotiations on sales of part of the company and allow any potential buyers to perform due diligence on what they are buying,

Alitalia will have circa 4 million or less seats available in July-August...... €600 Million just ain't worth it.

and:

Sorry,
Typical italian attitude, they deserve to loose after sooooo many years of corruption and attitude problems. If they know how to do it (typical italian expression) than show us!

And do not complain if you alitalia pilots find a job with another european airline; explaining how good it was in your former airline:ugh: (and yes i know a few...)

Ryanair will have a field day filling up their Italian bases.

This situation looks GRAVE. No guarantee any new state funds will be repaid. Will be curious to see if any new White Knights swoop in. After Etihad and the latest union vote, highly unlikely.

Good luck to all involved!

Not sure many ex Alitalia pilots are going to be rushing to the FR door? A major restructuring with a new company? Older pilots not inclined to finish career at FR. Don't know details but pensions will probably work out well. Therefore natural attrition taking care of the pilot / frame reductions going into new company. Alitalia pilot demographic not that young I think. Nett effect is not that many spare pilots for the new ops which will probably still have better t's&c's than FR. There'll be a few but not the hoards that FR need. Also they'll be running through the summer so no short term candidates. All need type rating too...

New OPS??? I think many here don't know that this is not Alitalia. The company we are talking about is CAI Compagnia Aerea Italiana. It has been created in 2008 by about 12 italian investors to "save" Alitalia. They run the Alitalia brand. Alitalia it self went bust in 2008, CAI took everything they needed, like name, aircrafts, staff, slots etc. plus AirOne and started from 0 on the 18.01.2009.

Which means the debit they have, was built up from 0 in 2009 until now.
So knowing that, what sense would it make to start the whole **** again?:ugh:

I'd like to say good riddance to another basket case legacy carrier that should have gone bankrupt years ago but knowing the Italians they will come up with some back door deal to resurrect it under a new name that gets EU approval.

And so who is next? We have seen the gradual demise of European legacy carriers either through bankruptcy or merger/takeover. would KL, IB and OS still be around without the powerful parent taking them over or merging. in fact is any Euro legacy carrier unchanged from twenty years ago.

The way things are going another ten years will see FR and Easy dominating everything except the traditional big city pairs where there is enough premium traffic for the remaining big players which by them are effectively LH inc Eurowings) BA (inc Vueling) and AF which leads one to ask is that really the competitive market the regulators were striving for for will it be even more of a cartel than back in the days of national airlines and pooled routes

Air Malta with a bit of luck

P.S. Regards KL/AF I thought it was the other way round? KL doing quite well and propping up the struggling AF side?

ZFT, your friend should be OK . In most western European countries , including Italy, pensions funds are , unlike in the US for instance, separate entities and normally not affected by bankruptcies and often even backed up or guaranteed by the State. That is if you had a plain vanilla Alitalia contract of course, and not working for a subcontractor entity..

Thanks. No, he worked from early 60s through to late 80s as an Alitalia employee. Just about always on outstations.

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?

"When is the Italian government going to wake up and realise that this is money down the drain?"

Well it isn't from their point of view - it keeps a lot of people in work, it saves the jobs handed out to old friends over the last 30 years, it pushes the issue down the road for someone else to worry about (maybe), it saves a nasty smell around at election time

Italian politics & economics is not like politics and economics in the UK

As an Italian I can reasonably say that probably the majority of my citizens are completely fed-up with this mockery of a carrier and would love to see it dismantled tomorrow morning. Problem is, there are 12000 and more people to take care of.
In the meantime, the govt nominated 3 liquidators and approved a loan of 600 mil EUR to continue operations for the time being.
Also, their AOC will be renewed on a month-to-month basis from now on. They keep saying that it will not be nationalized, and let's hope they keep their word.

Certain people on this forum, and in the wider UK, complain when the UK is prohibited from doing something because of EU regulations. It works both ways: the Italian government cannot bail out Alitalia because that would be illegal under EU rules, and anyway the government has made it clear that it has no intention of doing so (and 77% of the population agree). Even the loan will have to be approved by the EU. It stands to reason that whatever assets it has will realise more in an orderly disposal than in a fire sale.

The way I read all this is that the staff were given a vote, on the one hand they could take a pay cut and lose some jobs but the majority keep theirs and the company will be re-financed, or on the other hand they say no to all this and everyone loses their job.


I may be wrong but if it was me I would take the hit just to save peoples jobs but it seems the staff aren't interested and are happy to shut down the airline.

Their bluff was called. Like certain posters on this thread, they assumed there would be another bailout.

Already 8.000.000.000 euros, yes you read correctly 8 billion euros as disclosed today by the news, poured by governments over 2 decades;

Squandering taxpayer money, just to avoid social and political unrest. Years ago authorities and unions snatched a scheme which allowed unprecedented unemployment benefits of 80% of salaries for 7 years for a large part of the staff to be laid off..

And here they come (Today) with the usual loan (Taxpayer money) of 600.000.000 euros which will never be paid back, just to postpone the inevitable fate..

Sad for those, and there are and were many, quailfied professionals who soon or later will pay dearly. Sad for an airline which was Italy's pride for more than half a century.

Nepotism which is the leprosy of Italy, political wrongdoings known to undermine any enterprise in the country will prevent a possible recovery, add wrong strategical decisions, failure to adapt to a changing environment, and the fate is sealed, but when will that happen ?

In the meantime, there are pressures to find a buyer within 6 months, to handover this mess, so as to involve a foreign operator in the quest for implementing those impossible reforms..

Will there be any interest ?

80% of Aircraft are EI- flagged i.e. Lease co.

LH has said that it isn't interested in Alitalia:
http://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/idUKKBN17T0ZZ
Probably not interested in returning to Italy either after LH Italia either.

Plus 1.8 Billion from Etihad, let's not forget those.

I think expansion of Vueling and opening of a LEVEL long haul base are more likely ...

My sympathy for ****** is very limited.

RAT5 and T1grm

I did debate for some minutes as to which waya round to put Af/KL but then do BA and IB have joint ownership or is it a hidden BA take over.

I think the realpolitic of it is AF is more important than KL because France is bigger than the Netherlands and I dont thinl the Dutch care about status like we do in Uk, as long as they have the money and the wider Eu and financial advantages of what is a pretty powerful group they will just keep quiet.

Not an expert on these things but since the 'joining' both seem to have benefited in some ways from route rationalisation, financing and fleet development and have managed to keep two distinct and established brands .

The thing is what will happen to service and fares in Europe if we end up with an airline map that comprises
AF/KL BA/IB LH uber Alles plus Ryanair and Ezy

We effectively already have that with One World, Sky Team, Star Alliance, EZ and FR. Europe is to all intents and purposes dominated by 5 groups/alliances. I think we'll just see further consolidation within those groups/alliances. I think 5 big players is a good number to maintain competition and wouldn't be too worried if IAG (for example) ended up owning all the EU based airlines in the One World alliance. All IMHO of course :)

Well, i don't think they have any interest whatsoever into owning airberlin, which is after all still a oneworld member, even though they fly a third of their aircraft for Austrian and Eurowings.

it seems that everyone forgets old Alitalia fact :
Every Monday bankruptcy,every Friday they are still there.
:}

How much money can this airline suck up? Where does it all go?

As much as you can throw at her, faster than you can throw it at her apparently.

Good question.
Less than a year ago (6 July 2016) upper mgmt was saying that they were losing 500.000 EUR per day. Half a mil every day!
Empty planes and unprofitable routes, perhaps?

Is that so? Based on Olympic Airways experience it had more to do with full flights not being profitable due to high costs?

Olympic and Alitalia same desease:
NEPOTISM

taxpayer money squandered by governments does wonders, it's magic,

Personally I think that all the low cost carriers Ryanair, EasyJet and vueling will all base extra aircraft in Italy ASAP so that when AZ does go there is others already waiting to carry there pax.

Is there many routes that are not currently serve by other airlines or does AZ have competition on most routes

Thanks BPI. Very clever.
Cheered me up no end.

..and all this under the watchful eye of IATA, the European Union, the World Trade Federation, NAFTA and the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement..

button push ignored

i think you have missed out the bit where LH collapses and Aeroflot take over Czech LOT Wizz Tarom and the US 3 divest BA and AF and 20 years later retrench back to the states