Alitalia in Extraordinary Administration: Analysis of the report presented by the board of commissioners to the “Special Commission for urgent acts of the Italian Senate”

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This is the English version of my analysis about Alitalia commissioners management written some week ago for “Poteri Deboli”, Gianni Dragoni blog (www.giannidragoni.it). Gianni Dragoni is one of the most known and appreciated Italian economic journalists. He has been writing for many years for “Il Sole 24ore” and has participated in several successful television programs as a columnist and analyst on important issues of Italian and international economics. Alitalia has often been the subject of his analyzes.


 

On  May 17, 2018, the Alitalia Extraordinary Administration, on the occasion of the hearing at the Special Committee of the Senate, presented a document of 41 pages describing the work done by introducing some numbers related to its Alitalia’s management. 

The objective of this article is to analyze the essential parts of Commissioners document, with the aim of focusing on the current status of the former flag company. 

Alitalia likely lives the most dramatic moment of its long and troubled existence and it should be pointed out immediately that its destiny is closely connected to that of about 50 thousand people if we consider the direct and indirect stakeholder of the company.

 

The document is introduced by a narration of the brief history of Alitalia SAI followed by a section dedicated to the market overview that appears absolutely out of context as extrapolated from any business strategy. Moreover, the commissioners are not managers, they are public officials who have to manage a period of temporary administration in order not to disperse the value of the insolvent company in the interests of creditors. 

It is stated that it is necessary to increase the presence on the long-range market, which is common to many analysts. It can be, everything can be !!! and every opinion deserves respect, but then you find out that the most profitable airlines in the world are airlines operating on the short-medium range for which some reflection is due. In my opinion, the revenues are not the main problem of Alitalia that thanks to the extraordinary penetration of its brand as evidenced by the same document presented by the Commissioners, miraculously manages a substantial stability of revenues despite the management disasters that have occurred since the privatization of 2008.

It is incredible the combination that has characterized the life of Alitalia in the last decade in which each management has done worse than the previous one and it was not easy !!! Unfortunately, this incredible exaltation of the famous concept that “at worst there is no end” has not even withdrawn the commissioners management as I will demonstrate in the continuation of this analysis.

Let’s go over the section dedicated to the market scenario that seems out of context and let’s get into the second topic proposed by the document regarding the description of the actions undertaken in this year of extraordinary administration. 

In order to justify the logic of the actions undertaken, the Commissioners inform us beforehand of the criticalities encountered when they arrived, which are very similar to those described by me on the Avionews.com press agency in October 2016 when Alitalia’s top managers said in the world that everything was fine and was in line with the budget and they resented me trying to block the site with the publication of that article.

Specifically, the Extraordinary Administration informs the Senators of the Commission that they found the company main item sas following:

  1. negative sales and bookings trend, mainly due to lack of confidence 
  2. disadvantaged supply agreements
  3. deteriorated industrial relations
  4. complex organization and inadequate processes (still analog)
  5. inadequate information systems
  6. network to optimize

So the commissioners have worked in order to find solutions to the problems encountered in a context of administration that by definition is extraordinary and temporary. Here we must acknowledge that they have succeeded in a substantial stability of revenues despite the state of insolvency of the company. This once again demonstrates the degree of penetrability on the market of Alitalia brand. 

Now let’s analyze the voice regarding the Personnel, the Organizational Structure and Internal Processes. I have long worked to acquire organizational process data that I was still aware of by intuition considering the results obtained, but which are now also able to try by document.

 

Internal processes and the use of fleet

We start from the internal process mechanisms, they have always been the real problem of the Italian airline, which is the main factor of inefficiency that generates the enormous losses that the company has endured in its long and glorious history. We immediately clarify one point: Alitalia’s internal processes during the commissioners management not only have not improved but they have worsened. I will try to document as much as analytically possible this unstoppable decrease in the level of process efficiency.

We start by showing the following slide on page 16 of the document presented to the Senate:

Meanwhile, it should first be noted that the aircraft owned seems not to be 41 as stated in the slide and the commissioners themselves inform us about it in their report dated January 26, 2018 pursuant to art. 4, paragraph 2, Decree Law of 23 December 2003, n. 347. On page 11 of this report, the commissioners inform us that the lessors AirFinance and DVB have enforced the pledge on the Irish companies through which Alitalia owned 30 aircraft. So, out of the 41 aircraft declared as property it is necessary to deduct 30 of them because they were out of business, so Alitalia would have remained with only 11 aircraft owned. Furthermore, a very important event is not reported about the fleet in operation related to the decision of the Commissioners to return to the lessor n. 5 Airbus A320-216 aircraft. In fact, the aircraft of this model were 43 at the beginning of the commission management.

The same slide also describes the average block flight hours for each family of aircraft making up the fleet and, starting from this data, I will try to demonstrate empirically all the operational deficiencies that are the primary causes of the collapse of the company together with the “Supply Chain upstream” “And that during the commissarial management they became more accentuated.

We begin by identifying an index used today by the most virtuous airlines within their management control models, this index defines the level of operational efficiency through a coefficient of aircraft use on a daily basis called DSH (Daily Stick Hour).

To obtain the DSH index proceed from the flight hours defined as “Stick” within a given period which in our case coincides with the period from May 12, 2017 to May 26, 2018. The “Stick Hour”, differ from the Block Hour indicated in the slide presented by the commissioners, for the fact that while the latter count the flight time including the taxiing of the aircraft both at the landing and at take-off, the hours “Stick” instead they only count the actual flight time, that is, when the aircraft detaches its wheels from the ground to when it is put back. In this analysis work, I determined the “Stick” hours by calculating them with the FlightRadar 24 application and I was able to compute the DSH index using a statistical linear regression model whose independent variables are represented by the actual flight hours in the period considered, by the cycles carried out by the aircraft in the same period and by a defined coefficient Lambda which concentrates the exogenous variables calculated with approximation Alpha = 0.01 referred to the statistical model T of Student.

Below I present the DSH that I managed to calculate for all aircraft in the fleet except one: the Boeing 777/300 (registered EI -WLA) leased by the management commissioner who having entered the fleet in September 2017 requires a calculation on a different reference period, so I will deal with this later in this paper.

According to the general performance stabilization criterion, the tolerance interval within which the value of the DSH is satisfactory for the aircraft models used by Alitalia is as follows:

Airbus A 319/320 => (8.00 : 10.50);      Airbus A321 => (7.67 : 9.65); 

Embraer 175 => ( 6.02 : 7.79);           Embraer 190 => ( 6.84 : 7.71) 

Airbus A330 => (13.92 : 16.54);         Boeing 777/200 => ( 14.88 : 17.10) 

The DHS model shows that out of 117 aircraft making up the fleet (777/300 excluded) as can be easily verified only the 5 aircraft highlighted in yellow respect the tolerance range expressed above, stabilizing in the lower part of the range.

It is therefore necessary to assess the causes of these absolutely unsatisfactory data and then identify and analyze the factors that determine this ascertained operational inefficiency, below I try to define the 4 items that in my opinion have the most impact:

  1. Uneven fleet even among aircraft of the same model: the 38 Airbus 320s are the emblem of the confusion, the Alitalia fleet is composed in the meantime of A320-214 and A320-216 series (coming from Airone). Among the 216 there are some equipped with CFM56 5B6 family engines generally used for Airbus A319. This model of engine has a Thrust set at 23,500 Libre against the 27,000 Libre of the CFM56 5B4 family which are the engines that usually equip the Airbus A 320. The difference is significant, it is in fact that aircraft with 5B6 engines have an angular coefficient of lower climb therefore they take more time to reach the maximum cruising altitude with consequent higher consumption. In addition, these aircraft have operating limitations that become absolutely critical for flights longer than 3 hours or even in some airports with limited runways where in the summer, when temperatures are very hot, the aircraft is not allowed to take off at MTOW (Maximum takeoff weight) ) standard and this causes limitations in the number of passengers and therefore also the consequent possibility of not being able to board passengers who have regularly paid a ticket. Solving this problem would be quite simple, but Alitalia has been living there for years and even the commissioners have done nothing to solve it. It would be enough to read carefully the Service Bulletin n. 72-0003 and the n. 72-0625 issued by the manufacturer of CFM engines to solve the problem easily and brilliantly with a negligible expense. But obviously in Alitalia someone does not have time for all of this, the loan money is public and therefore nobody suffers a damage of such money is spent in an illogical way and without any etiological link with the concept of profitability.
    Always in relation to the lack of homogeneity of the fleet, even the configurations of the aircraft of the same model are different, we have in fact A320 configured to 171, 174 and 180 seats and it is certainly not difficult to imagine the many problems that these varied configurations create for those who deal with schedule flight operations.
    Also in the “long-haul” sector, the fleet inhomogeneity. In fact, in addition to the bizarre idea of flying ETOPS to Mexico City with significant problems of limitation to take off from the Mexican airport, the long haul fleet is characterized by varied configurations to which is added the lack of correlation between long-range commercial strategy and characteristics of aircraft in the fleet, as evidenced by the fact of opening 3 sales classes in the long-haul sector (Premium – Business – Economy) without considering that of the 14 aircraft A330 in the fleet there are two configured only with two classes for which at operational level is forced to divide the A330 fleet into two segments with obvious consequences on the efficiency and effectiveness of the processes.
    As regards to Boeing 777 sector, the Commissioners, some notes ago, decided to define a leasing contract for a single model aircraft 777/300 in the fleet. The aircraft, due to its characteristics, differs not a little from the 777/200 series model, which constitutes the fleet of the Alitalia B777. All this requires a separate management of this single model of aircraft in the fleet not being able to use the economies of scale typical of the same family of aircraft. Alitalia therefore has in its fleet an airplane with respect to which it can not take advantage of any backup in case of one aircraft of its long haul fleet is on ground. Now if there is one thing that teaches you in any Master in Aviation are the tragic income consequences related to a choice of having a single aircraft in a fleet.

Below I present the DSH of this aircraft entered in the Alitalia fleet in September 2017:

the tolerance range within which the DSH value is satisfactory for this model is as follows: Boeing 777/300 => (15.36 :
17.46). So here we are facing the umpteenth negative data and I wonder how it could be otherwise if you take a Boeing
777/300 whose fixed costs exceed the million dollars a month and then, because of its specificities not replicable within
the fleet, you fly 1,854 hours in 8 months. Even if it carried gold bars that airplane could never be profitable. If we
imagined it as a single cost center we could easily determine that the decision to follow up the leasing contract by the
Extraordinary Administration produced no less than 15 million euros of higher costs for Alitalia.

  1. Low correlation between the network operated and the fleet in operation: those who conceived and managed the network did not take into consideration the peculiarities of the Alitalia fleet. In this regard, I mention only a few examples such as having only 5 aircraft in fleet (the Embraer 190) having the “Steep Aproach” system necessary to land on London City airport, where Alitalia is increasingly concentrating its operations among the London airports, or still have only 4 A319 out of 22 aircraft that can land fully loaded on the Florence airport. I could go on with at least another dozen of these examples of inconsistency between the Network and the fleet, which cause significant inefficiencies translating into the unsatisfactory DSH values reported above.
  2. Excessive use of ferry flights: the low degree of correlation between network and fleet also determines the phenomenon of aircraft repositioning. It often happens that the Company’s operations are forced to make use of the so-called “ferry flights” which are those flights operated without passengers but only for aircraft positioning. These are a full cost against zero revenues and they are one of the most important indicators of the level of operational inefficiency. The disconcerting fact is that Alitalia has operated 444 positioning flights in the year of the commissarial management, as can be seen from the positioning of Fligthradar and I do not consider the positioning linked to charter flights. These flights, which I repeat are only a cost, have caused no less than 10 million euros of disbursements for the company equivalent to the annual salary of over 200 employees currently assisted by public subsidies.
  3. Aircraft maintenance: since my first analysis on Alitalia, I have tried to focus on the maintenance management of aircraft that have serious repercussions as well as on the accounts (being one of the main causes of the failure) also on the efficiency of internal processes. I have explained in detail some of the most important critical issues afflicting the Alitalia Maintenance area that requires a serious restructuring plan in all the segments that make up the so-called “part 145” starting from redundant obsolete maintenance programs causing of considerable operational inefficiencies. Nothing has been done by the management of the commissioners to remedy a maintenance policy devoid of any logic of income and process and primary cause of costs out of control. There is no coordination between the maintenance planning and the one related to the operations and this not because in Alitalia there are no highly skilled people in managing the processes, but only because these people are harassed by illogical decisions taken by those who often have no experience of this industry. I think that if placed in a position to work according to logical criteria, the maintenance Alitalia (and I refer also to the former subsidiaries Atitech and AMS), actually decimated in its skills by the social slaughter perpetrated by privatization to today, could be a very profitable area of the company, in other words, a significant center of revenue if a serious sales policy to third parties of maintenance services will be implemented. 

 

The actions performed by the Commissioners in relation to the employees and the organizational structure 

Regarding the employees, the Commissioners in their report inform the Extraordinary Committee of the Senate that they have reached an agreement with the trade unions to have public wage assistance for 1,480 working units. The traditional strategy that characterizes Alitalia from privatization to today is being replicated, affecting the weak link in the chain represented by workers. Therefore, public money is used to subsidize 1,480 people and this is added to the 900 million euros already allocated by the government for Alitalia in Extraordinary Administration in the form of a loan. Nobody can really understand what great advantage has brought this further act of “social butchery” into the strategy of the commissioners. Wanting to quantify it, we can estimate a salary savings of about 50 million euros on annual basis that considering the daily loss declared by the commissioner document with reference to the first quarter 2018 of approximately 2 million euros per day, it is equivalent to one month of losses of Alitalia. Well the dignity of an additional 1,480 people is destroyed and citizens’ money is being raided to recover 1 more life for Alitalia. I leave to the readers’ sensitivity, every consideration in this regard, not without here again to reiterate that the employees are not Alitalia problem.

In relation to the company’s managers, the document introduced to Special Commission of the Senate describes a variation of the organizational structure that is completely unusual considering the role of the commissioners in a company declared insolvent. In fact, the reduction of 60 managerial positions is announced through the exit of 39 executives and the simultaneous recruitment of 20 new managers, to which are added 6 additional new managers promoted within the company perimeter. At this point a question arises: who are these 20 heroes who have left what we imagine were their brilliant managerial positions in other companies to work in a company declared insolvent that exerts a business model unknown to them and in a context, that of extraordinary administration which by its nature is a temporary business practice? and above all, what are the safeguard clauses that our heroes have obtained, if a buyer of Alitalia’s assets decides to make use of other professionals, perhaps coming from the aviation industry as  logic would impose? And finally, who will pay the amount of these possible contractual clauses to safeguard these 20 heroes?

It would also be advisable to know from the Commissioners what increased costs he had to bear Alitalia in Extraordinary Administration (and therefore its creditors including the State) due to the decision to interrupt the working relationship with 39 managers.

 

Digitization processes and information systems in Alitalia 

Unfortunately, despite the extraordinary administration highlights in its document the criticalities encountered in the information systems at the beginning of their task, nothing about it was done in this year to improve the systems.

As far as I was able to reconstruct, Alitalia still uses approximately 10 different information systems within its internal processes. Nowadays, the efforts of successful managers in modern aviation have been to simplify and standardize processes in order to neutralize as much as possible the numerous exogenous variables that characterize the business model. In Alitalia instead, in the succession of the different management teams, an increasingly complex level has been reached with regard to the correlation of internal activities. Since the advent of integrated systems (ERP), virtuous airlines have been oriented towards simplification, trying to centralize management information systems as much as possible and it is no coincidence that companies producing integrated management programs have developed within the Aviation sector important “modularity” in their systems. On the other hand, the numerous information systems in Alitalia do not even dialogue each other, except in rare cases. Specifically, Alitalia uses:

  1. the SABRE reservation program for passenger bookings – CRS / GDS;
  2. The SABRE Interact program for airport handling operations and passenger ceck-ins. As far as I could verify it seems that Sabre interact is not used for loading plans, so I wonder how long it takes Alitalia to define the “Weight & Balance” of its flights and I am afraid that the procedure is inefficient and expensive;
  3. the MYIDTRAVEL program for the staff ticket office guaranteeing to Lufthansa, owner of the system, not only the payment for use but also about 2.5 Euro per ticket issued. It would be desirable to have a proprietary internal system at no cost avoiding making these gifts;
  4. the NETLINE program for managing flight operations in relation to aircraft operation scheduling and crew rostering. Netline is a program also published by Lufthansa and designed for small organizations. It has some operational limitations so that the German company itself does not use it. These limitations have led to update the program with a new release called “Netline plus” but at the moment Alitalia still uses the non-updated version; 
  5. the AMOS program for the management of maintenance events and for the purchase and management of aircraft components. Personally I am an admirer of this program which is characterized by a remarkable reliability and an excellent interface capability. If implemented in a dimension of modularity and related to an appropriate management control program, Amos performs its task very well. 
  6. the LIDO program used by flight dispatchers to edit flight plans
  7. the MATRIX program for the revenue management function 
  8. the PROS program for booking optimization
  9. the SIRAX program for revenue accounting 
  10. the SAP program for Administration, Finance, Control and Procurement. Version 7 is used, a limited release compared to recent versions that can only be used according to limited and outdated criteria.

Most likely, there are other programs related to other functions of which I have no knowledge, but these identified, unequivocally demonstrate that Alitalia uses at least 10 programs that in most cases do not interact with each other to manage processes that could be managed with 3 modular programs such as SAP (in recent versions), Saber and Amos with results in terms of simplification, standardization and process efficiency certainly much better. Moreover, with respect to this complexity of information systems, the commissioners have continued the outsourcing of the IT department started by the Arab administration, thus contributing to increasing chaos. Anyone working in aviation knows the importance of running information systems “in-house”. Unfortunately, the commissioners went in the opposite direction, consistently with the action of the Alitalia leading strategists from the privatization to today and who have incredibly looted the two sectors that together with the Flight Operation and the Quality System constitute the critical sectors of an airline: IT department and maintenance.

Still within the information systems, a special mention deserves the management of what we can define the “Saber case” that commissioners found themselves managing following the decision of Etihad to replace with Saber, the system of reservations and management of ground operation ARCO of which Alitalia was the owner. Commissioner Mr. Gubitosi mentioned during the hearing in the Senate the problems related to the reservation system, making it clear that the extraordinary administration is going to resolve the contract for the use of Sabre.

The migration from Arco to Saber was imposed by Etihad upon entry into the capital of the new Alitalia, also in accordance with the very close and well-known relations between James Hogan former CEO of Etihad and Shane Batt, Senior Vice President in Saber in strategic client area.

There is no doubt that Sabre has a greater functional range than Arco because it is constantly implemented and developed. On the other hand, Alitalia has invested very little in Arco to adapt it to the evolution of the market. Considering the current status of the Alitalia systems as described above, it appears very difficult that Sabre has been correctly implemented within the chaotic internal processes of Alitalia. Furthermore, it should be noted that the contract with Saber included: the booking, ticketing and DCS system plus the AirVision and AirCentre modules, which are two products of the Sabre portfolio related to ancillary sales and revenue management. Therefore it is not clear how it was possible to implement the system and at the same time allow the number of information systems described above to be in place considering that some of which can not be interfaced with Sabre. As far as I have explained, I think that the legal action taken by the Commissioners against Saber in order to get to the termination of the contract by challenging the functionality of the system is quite uncertain. It will be easy for Saber to prove that the implementation and cut-overs errors committed by Alitalia due to the Arab management’s wicked decisions are the primary cause of the system’s malfunctions. The damage to Alitalia is even greater if we consider that this implementation is payed by Alitalia about 57 million dollars to which must be added about 30 million USD per year, due to the fees on each ticket sold. I believe that the one signed with Alitalia is one of the most lucrative contracts ever signed by Saber in its history.

 

Sale of landing and take-off rights on London Heathrow Airport

Another topic discussed during the Senate hearing was the one concerning the sale by Alitalia to Etihad of the landing and take off rights related to London Heatrow airport. Since my first report on Avionews.com, I tried to focus the interest of public opinion on what I considered to be an operation that has caused considerable damage to Alitalia’s assets. Commissioner Mr. Gubitosi, during the hearing in the Senate and in a previous hearing at the Transport Commission of the Chamber, stated that these rights that Alitalia sold to Etihad in the year 2015 are to be considered negotiated at fair value even considering the SLOTs to which they refer. Dr. Gubitosi also stated that the right of repurchase is valid for 10 years.

In 2015, Alitalia sold five pairs of landing and take off rights on Heatrow to Etihad for a value of 12 million USD for each pair. In the same year the Scandinavian company SAS sold 2 pairs on Heatrow to Turkish Airlines for a total value of 82 million dollars, equal to 3.5 times the price paid by Etihad to Alitalia and, a little later, it sold one pair on Heatrow to American Airlines for 60 million dollars then 5 times the price paid to Alitalia. In the same year, Air France sold to Delta 6 pairs on Heatrow for 257 million USD, equal to 3.5 times the price paid by Etihad to Alitalia. In 2016, Air France sold one pair for USD 75 million to Oman Air, thus more than 6 times the price paid by Etihad to Alitalia and I could mention at least 4 other examples of landing and takeoff rights on Heatrow sales, everyone at prices never less than USD 35 million per pair. So, it is not clear how the Commissioner was able to define congruous, the price paid by Ethiad to Alitalia for the 5 pairs of slots on Heatrow, considering that these saIes I referred, they are in the same Slots of those sold by Alitalia. Finally, it is quite easy to estimate significant pecuniary damage for our former flag carrier, which could be determined in a range between 200 and 300 million dollars.

 

Analysis of economic data presented by Commissioners

The last part of the document presented by the commissioners to the Senate, describes the economic situation of the company under extraordinary administration and the summary data of the Income Statement and cash flows related to the management of the commissioners. The following slides are presented about the Income Statement:

The data produced by the commissioners, it should be specified, are not complete. Meanwhile, an updated situation of the Balance Sheet relating to the Commission administration is missing. Furthermore, some items are too synthetic. To have a more complete view of the data it would have been very useful to use more “splits”. EBITDA for the 8 months of 2017 of extraordinary administration reports a loss of 24 million euros, which become 117 million in the first three months of 2018. Even considering the seasonality of business model, it is not clear how a loss of 100 thousand euros a day average in 2017, it may have become an average loss of about 2 million euro a day in 2018. In a very short period of time, the company’s daily losses have more than increased tenfold. Perhaps it would have been opportune to explain the causes of this exponential variation of the loss of exercise, considering that no operations of an extraordinary nature are mentioned. If you can certainly understand the contraction of revenues by about 30% on a daily basis between the 8 months of 2017 and the first three months of 2018, considering that the first quarter of the year is the one that generates the lower revenues for all companies, it is no easy to understand the total cost variation. It is reduced by only about 8%, despite 1,500 less employees, a smaller number of aircraft with reference to the 5 airplanes leaving the fleet and an operating reduce by an average of 15%, (as shown by analyzing the figure relating to flight rights) and therefore a significant impact on variable costs.

About the data on the financial situation highlighted in the following slide, I can certainly consider the most cryptic data ever seen in my life as a modest economic-financial analyst: 

I will try then to decode it highlighting those that I believe are real inconsistencies:

  1. the first item relative to the income result net of depreciation and amortization is “adjusted” considering the net of non-monetary items, it is not specified then almost these non-monetary items, considering that the amortization, being non-monetary items, are preliminarily excluded;
  2. The figure relating to working capital is combined with the item funds whose nature is not specified. Working capital identifies the balance between short-term financial receivables and payables. Alitalia informs us that there is a positive balance of 364 million without specifying if the data is generated considering also the credits / debts relating to the previous management or they consider only the management of the commissioners. In other words, the 759 million euro related to the balance of the working capital in April 2017 highlighted in the slide, have been reset or not? The detail is not insignificant because, assuming that this figure refers only to the circulating capital formed with the management of the commissioners, the figure is not correct for a series of factors linked to the correlation between that figure and the revenue and cost items highlighted in the slides related to the Income Statement.
    Finally, it is necessary to determine whether or not the debit that each company contracts with all its customers paying the ticket before receiving the service and which is a peculiar item in this business is considered in the balance of the Working Capital. This item for a company that generates 3 billion of revenues on an annual basis impacts for at least 500 million Euros on the Working Capital in terms of “cash in Advance” considering also the period in which the data was recorded. 
  3. Nothing is cited in detail about the debt situation of the Extraordinary Administration, we can only try to get to the data by induction or through a partial reclassification of the few economic data provided Based on my test I am convinced that Alitalia currently has a periodic one expired growing of financial debts that should be in a range that goes from 170 to 220 million euros.

Therefore, we can state that 769 million resulting in cash are virtual, they will soon be more than halved by short-term debts and the increase in operating costs during the summer season.

By the end of the year, Alitalia risks remaining without cash to operate its flights. I agree with what was stated in the Senate hearing by Mr Gubitosi: “It is necessary to make decisions early”, also because in my opinion, the summer period will be full of operational inefficiencies.

It is necessary as quickly as possible to define a strategy that links Alitalia to the country system that is able to protect its own internal economy and that is not, as in the last decade, a land of conquest by every type of airline. It is inconceivable that there is an Arab airline that connects Milan Malpensa to New York, just as it is inconceivable to build a system strategy that allows another Arab company to enter the Italian market to save Meridiana. The Sardinian company did not deserve this, so once again it will be the workers who will pay the costs and along with them the credibility of our country that in the world of civil aviation is now seen as a real joke.

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