Alitalia in Trouble?

[jonesey2k]

I don't think Alitalia has ever turned a profit in recent years?

[airbee]

Alitalia should be allowed to die. To let it continue means allowing its financial baggage - even if forgiven or restructured - and all its many administrative, contractual, Fleet and manning inefficiencies to continue in situ and unresolved. Alitalia is structurally and systemically unsound - why would one want to purchase - or even want to perpetuate such a structure? Best let it go and restart with a brand spanking new, largely debt free, piece of paper. Better for everyone; and that includes the majority of its employees. The Swiss did it with little real harm done..

[DaveB]

Why is a long lived airline any different to an upstart when its badly managed and unionised?

It's not Leif really. I've absolutely no interest in who makes a profit, who doesn't, who is well managed or who isn't.. plain and simple ;-) One would expect a national carrier to be slightly better 'dug in' both on a financial and managerial level but this it would seem is not the case. I feel sorry for the poor sods who've lost everything on a holiday they're not going to have and those who've been stranded. If this is due to an airline being badly managed and unionised, does that make it any worse? If Alitalia have been on their uppers for years due to unionisation and poor management, then perhaps they've at last got their just desert.

You'll have to excuse my ignorance of such things

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[Jon.M]

Should Alitalia be a special case because they're an historic company and a National Flag carrier?

Any special help they get would damage their competition, both small Italian airlines and other large international companies.

I'm interested in what people think. Don't forget that they recently had a government "loan" of €300m which was supposed to guarantee operations for a year.

Jon

[Prop Jockey]

Should Alitalia be a special case because they're an historic company and a National Flag carrier?

Any special help they get would damage their competition, both small Italian airlines and other large international companies.

I'm interested in what people think. Don't forget that they recently had a government "loan" of €300m which was supposed to guarantee operations for a year.

Jon

As much as I'd like to see the brand continue Jon, no special case for me. The downturn in their fortunes has been over many years and opportunities to stop the rot have been passed over. I do hope Alitalia survives - an airline like that is part of the national identity, and especially one that has so much history attached to it. At the end of the day business is business, and Alitalia have to play by the same rules and in the same economic environment as everyone else.

Cheers

Rich

[markw]

My experience of Alitalia back in the 90's was awful, lousy on board service like the bad old days of pre-privatisation BA with trolley dollys who were more interested in fixing their make-up and posing than serving (although I once caught a BA "EuroGatwick" subsidiary flight about the same time with dreadful, arsy cabin crew but they were the exception) and as for AZ's timetable, well it should have been entered for the Booker fiction prize as they were routinely up to an hour late. In the end we started to use then new kid on the block Air One for the Naples-Milan connections we used simply because they were more reliable, better on-board service and anything up to 50% cheaper. Seems like we were just the beginning as AirOne is now starting up long haul and has captured a lot of the Alitalia domestic and European market.

Alitalia has been a dying duck since the mid 90's and if it hadn't have been a heavily subsidised state enterprise with loads of PSO flights to the heel of Italy it would have died at the same time as Swissair and Sabena (who on the one occasion I used them were fine if nothing special). Italian politics, and their chaotic approach to management, are entirely behind the impending failure of the airline and much as I love Italy, I'm afraid I will never rate their ability to manage or run a country, or in the case of Italy, two seperate Italies plus Rome.

Always sad to see an airline go under. I wonder if the Pope has a back-up plan to get back to Rome from his visit to France if AZ do go bang? If any truckers are reading this and they are heading down to Italy to pick up some goods, if you see a bloke in a big pointy hat and white robes thumbing a lift just of the Autoroute du Soleil, you'll know AZ is no more and it's not the Paris head of the KKK...

[Garry Russell]

This all comes back to what I was saying above....they have to change but up until now any attempt of change has been fought so it has remained a dying duck.

Maybe too late now but it can't carry on like it was........so any take over (or saving) would effectively be the same as the rest will all have be different.

Pope should be OK as Air France would be the one's to take him back....Alitalia would take him there..national airline of the country visited returns him

Garry

[markw]

Pope should be OK as Air France would be the one's to take him back....Alitalia would take him there..national airline of the country visited returns him

Garry

Poor bloke, flying out with Alitalia and back with Air France, my two least favourite airlines with the rudest staff in the air and in the case of AF, pilots who both times tried to crater the runway at BHX by slamming the plane onto the ground!

I wonder who will provide Prayer Force 1 for the Vatican if AZ to go to the wall?

[speedbird591]

my two least favourite airlines with the rudest staff in the air

Nonsense - you've obviously never flown with me, Mark

All these bankruptcies are playing hell with my World of AI traffic ...

Ian

[Garry Russell]

No worries Ian

It was still there in Ye Olden days

Garry