Ln August 25, 1960, the Italian miracle exposed itself to the world by organizing the Olympic Games for the first time in its history. And this miracle has wings. Alitalia, founded in 1947, is becoming one of Europe’s largest airlines. Ten years later it was the first fully equipped with jet aircraft and transported Italy to all continents. But the miracle gradually evaporated in the clouds of repeated crises at the end of the 20th century.and century. Structurally in loss since the end of the 1990s, the company has not earned a penny since 2000 and ended up disappearing on October 15, 2021, plagued by management errors, over-investments and repeated strikes.
Bankruptcy case
But you never completely disappear in the magical world of air travel. Renamed “Italia Transporto Aereo” (ITA), the company, controlled by the Italian State, is in the process of being sold to the German Lufthansa and the Italian-Swiss shipowner MSC. Finally, what remains, that is to say a start-up of 50 planes and 2,800 employees against 11,000 people in 2017 when the pilots rejected the umpteenth restructuring plan which provided for 1,700 departures.
The chairman of the board, Mario Draghi, will he succeed in this area too, where his predecessors have broken their teeth for more than twenty years. Yet they spent a total of more than 13 billion euros, attempted marriages with the whole world, without getting rid of the problem that stuck to their finger like the band-aid of Captain Haddock sitting on his plane seat.
Bold but cautious, the two buyers hastened to ask the Italian State to remain, even as a minority, in the capital of the company.
To achieve this, he put the company through bankruptcy and brought out a start-up by seeking a lieutenant from Sergio Marchionne, the late emblematic boss of Fiat. Alfredo Altavilla has ordered new planes, thanks to new aid of 700 million euros from the State and has gone in search of “partners”. Lufthansa, barely recovered from the Covid crisis (it has repaid its state aid), should add ITA to its collection of European companies alongside the Austrian, Swiss or Belgian flags. For its part, the carrier MSC, as rich as Cresus with soaring sea freight rates, is diversifying inexpensively, for the moment, into air freight. It is also in negotiations with the Bolloré group to take over its port and logistics activities in Africa.
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