Alitalia. Last call, tonight flight Az1586 Cagliari-Rome closes 74 years of history

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October 14, 2021Az 1586. It is this cold alphanumeric code that tonight will seal the saddest epilogue of a history spanning over 70 years.

A last act with no happy ending.

When shortly after at 11.10 pm the Cagliari - Rome flight will land in Fiumicino, the curtain will fall on the old Alitalia which at midnight will pass the baton to Ita.

In the meantime, the remaining half of September salaries were credited to workers this morning.

Employees yesterday received a communication from the extraordinary commissioners Gabriele Fava, Giuseppe Leogrande and Daniele Santosuosso, which read: "Dear colleagues and colleagues, we can now confirm that we have given a mandate for the remaining 50% of salaries to be credited tomorrow". 

Usb mobilization continues for Alitalia workers. Meetings open to all staff are scheduled for today. A permanent garrison is scheduled for tomorrow at the airport. In the week in which Ita arrives in Fiumicino, explains Usb in a press release, Fiumicino airport must "become the center of attention for all those who work or have worked for Alitalia" and for all those who care about compliance with the laws that " they do not accept redundancies in the third European market, they do not tolerate any kind of discrimination, they defend the national contract and think that a public company cannot offer wages and contracts lower than Ryanair's level ". 

The taxiing of Ita to the runway continues in view of tomorrow's take-off with the first Rome-Milan flight. In recent days, according to what has been learned, the new company has finalized the recruitment procedures, delivering the badges and activating the IT systems of the employees who have boarded. Therefore, we start with 2800 employees and 52 aircraft with the forecast of the industrial plan of a progressive growth of the fleet up to double it, in fact, in 2025.

"The work we have to do is to recover a market that has been lost" explains the CEO of Ita Fabio Lazzerini. "Alitalia has tried to do everything to keep a market, and the women and men who work in Alitalia have been heroic - says Lazzerini - because they have faced a year that any company has struggled to face because there was a pandemic but , they faced it as a company in extraordinary administration for the fourth year, let's not forget that most of Alitalia's workers have been getting their salary in fits and starts for a few months ". "Maintaining the market has been difficult, low cost has eroded it, we enter with the aim of taking back the market" remarks Lazzerini. "We are in the most difficult season ofyear which is the winter but perhaps there will be the possibility of starting to occupy those spaces that low cost naturally leave ".

Alitalia was founded in Rome on 16 September 1946 with the name of Alitalia-Aerolinee Italiane Internazionali and operated the first flight on 5 May 1947 on the Turin-Rome-Catania route. Two months later the first international flight took off, from Rome to Oslo. In March 1948 the first intercontinental flight was inaugurated: a flight lasting a total of 36 hours, which connected Milan to Buenos Aires with intermediate stopovers in Rome, Dakar, Natal, Rio de Janeiro and San Paolo. Between 1949 and 1950, the fleet grew, the company's first flight attendants entered service and hot meals were introduced on board the aircraft. 

Now owned by IRI and therefore already a national airline, in 1957 it was also merged with the other Italian airline, Lines Aeree Italiane, also owned by IRI, giving life to Alitalia-Lines Aree Italiane. In 1960, Alitalia became the official sponsor of the Rome Olympics. In the same year, the first jet planes are introduced while the following year marks the opening of the Rome - Fiumicino Airport, in which the company will position its main hub. Ten years later, the company becomes the first European company to have only jet aircraft in its fleet and, with the delivery of the first Boeing 747-100, the company adopts a new logo, the classic tricolor 'A' that will be shown on all aircraft tails. as part of the new livery. Even the 70s is80 years of development with the expansion of the fleet and network: Douglas DC-10, McDonnell Douglas MD-80 and Airbus A300 arrive with the opening of routes from Rome to the Far East, such as Tokyo.

Yet, the first problems are already lurking, born from the evolution of the scenario where the monopoly regime begins to creak and where trade union relations are also profoundly changing. The end of the 70s is marked by the strikes of Aquila Selvaggia with the pilots climbing the barricades against the proposal of a new single contract for all air transport workers, wanted by the CGIL, CISL and UIL, with the president Umberto Nordio. Tensions that were never resolved in the following years, marked by heavy conflicts, with the company that no longer seems to be able to rise to the challenges imposed by the market. At the end of the 1980s, in June 1988, the rupture between Nordio and the then president of IRI, Romano Prodi, took place. A correspondence ('dear Prodi, dear Nordio') that puts, in black and white,strategic differences between the shareholder and top management. The clash sees the exit of Nordio, with the arrival from Sweden of Carlo Verri (Electrolux). It is a revolutionary breath that brings the top manager, former supporter of '' The Inverted Pyramid '' by Jan Carlzon, the new manager's bible in the age of services. Verri died prematurely in a car accident and to lead Alitalia, Franco Nobili's Iri appoints Giovanni Bisignani and Michele Principe.it was services. Verri died prematurely in a car accident and to lead Alitalia, Franco Nobili's Iri appoints Giovanni Bisignani and Michele Principe.it was services. Verri died prematurely in a car accident and to lead Alitalia, Franco Nobili's Iri appoints Giovanni Bisignani and Michele Principe. 

At the turn of the decade, between the 80s and the 90s, Alitalia increasingly lost altitude and entered the tunnel from which it was no longer able to get out. This is evidenced by the alarm launched in 1994 by the new CEO, Roberto Schisano, known as the Texan with the eyes of ice, who, in no uncertain terms, warns that Alitalia is 500 days old. Schisano engages in a very hard battle with the pilots, which becomes disruptive when he decides to take Boeing 767 aircraft and related crews on wet lease from the Australian Ansett. The revolt of Aquila Selvaggia is unleashed with the president of Anpac Giovanni Erba and the pilots who occupy the slopes (February 1995) and (June 1995) fall 'suddenly' ill. And the 'healing' comes with a secret agreement (considered '' infamous '' by theIri) that Schisano signs with the pilots and that, once it comes out of the notary's safe where it was deposited and made public, it will cost Schisano the seat together with that of President Renato Riverso. Another head that falls in Alitalia. Yes, because the history of Alitalia is also this: a machine that 'grinds' CEOs and presidents.

The helm was entrusted, in March 1996, to Domenico Cempella, a manager who began his career from the bottom, from the front line of the Fiumicino airport. It is up to him to trace the new Alitalia route with a new industrial plan, supported by a capital increase and by the positive sentiment of the workers who had known and appreciated him in the years of his apprenticeship; Cempella redesigns the corporate structure of the company with new hccs, high competitive carriers, leaner and cost-competitive structures, and provides for employee share ownership. But above all, Cempella explores the terrain of new alliances and finds the ideal partner in KLM. The two companies form an operational merger with a full joint venture.

A winning formula that allows Alitalia to realize the last real operating profit in its history with the distribution of an appropriate dividend. It will record another at the beginning of 2000 but deriving from extraordinary items due to the capital gain from the sale of KLM shares. The flying Dutch, in fact, on 28 April 2000 announced their divorce from Alitalia and were forced to pay a penalty of 250 million euros. September 11, 2001 arrives. The terrorist attack on the Twin Towers causes a tsunami on world air transport. Alitalia, already weak in its own right, is losing blows and

closes important intercontinental destinations. The company had a life-saving donut in store thanks to the entry in July 2001 into the Skyteam alliance, signed by the CEO Francesco Mengozzi, with president Fausto Cereti, with a cross-shareholding with Air France. But from that blow Alitalia is unable to recover: after a brief interlude with Giuseppe Bonomi as president and Marco Zanichelli, another change at the top arrives: in May 2004, Giancarlo Cimoli arrives, with new plans and in 2007 the privatization front opens. . 

At the beginning of 2008, negotiations with Air France were tightened but the political elections broke the bank and Alitalia took the stage of the electoral campaign. Silvio Berlusconi announces the consortium of Italian patriots to block the French advance. On April 2, 2008, Jean Cyril Spinetta leaves the negotiating table at the Magliana bunker. "For Alitalia we need an exorcist", said the president of the company Maurizio Prato on that cold April evening. After the elections are won, the Fenice operation starts, which, under the direction of Intesa SanPaolo, puts together a consortium by aggregating Air One

and about twenty Italian entrepreneurs, starting with Roberto Colaninno. The investment in the field is 1.1 billion.

Here ends the story of Lai, who ended up in extraordinary administration, and begins that of Alitalia Cai, an Italian airline company, without debts, which remain in the hands of the old Alitalia, and with a net cut in employees. It will be a very short season for Cai. The newborn Alitalia, which also sees the entry of Air France in the shareholding with 25%, aims to consolidate itself on the domestic market but is squeezed between the increasingly fierce competition of low cost airlines and the arrival of high-speed rail, which closes the golden age of the rich Rome-Milan section. Cai proceeds to a

renewal of the fleet, with the arrival of Airbus aircraft under '' onerous leasing '' from an Irish finance company owned by the Toto family of Air One. But the accounts do not take off. The turn around target moves away and the balance sheets close at a loss. Within five years, the company changes three CEOs: Rocco Sabelli, Andrea Ragnetti and Gabriele Del Torchio.

Alitalia is burning cash and a new recapitalization is required, in which Air France does not participate, thus diluting its stake. Meanwhile, a new chapter is about to open which will be even shorter, that of Alitalia Sai. While Cai's accounts sink, at the end of 2013 the problem of a new capital injection arises. The dossier is on the table of the Letta government and then arrives on that of the Renzi government. Poste Italiane also intervenes for this new rescue. The search for a new partner starts and, this time, the white knight seems to come from the Arabian Peninsula and, to be precise, from Abu Dhabi. It is here that Etihad, a smaller company than Emirates and Qatar Airways, has its hub, which, however, has seen strong growth in recent years with massive investments in the fleet.A close negotiation begins and, in the end, in August 2014 the agreement is signed that sanctions the entry of the Arabs with the maximum quota allowed for a non-EU carrier, 49%

 Alitalia, with Etihad license plate, becomes Sai, the Italian airline company. It takes off on 1 January 2015. It starts with Luca Cordero di Montezemolo as president and with Silvano Cassano as CEO, co-designated by Arab and Italian partners and a manager who is appreciated by James Hogan, Etihad's number one. The first line of managers speak a lot of English, deploying many Anglo-Saxon executives. The Cassano management lasts only a few months, until September 2015. For the next six months Montezemolo directs the company also with the powers of CEO, until on 7 March 2016, Cramer Ball, the Australian manager chosen by Hogan, arrives from India. Instead of an operational breakeven, Alitalia continues to record losses: a black hole in the accounts, caused by a hemorrhage of two million a day, which creates strong tensions between the shareholder banks and Etihad.And Ball's new business plan, considered too optimistic about revenues, is not convincing.

It is 2017 and a new impasse arrives. Everything is being tried with a new rescue operation, which includes a recapitalization and an agreement with the unions. Agreement that was blatantly rejected by a referendum in April. On May 2, Alitalia Sai is placed in extraordinary administration. To guide it arrive three commissioners Luigi Gubitosi, Enrico Laghi and Stefano Paleari. There is talk of a transitional phase of a few months while the sale of the company is started. Lufthansa looks out but its cut plan is scary. In 2018 a system operation took shape under the direction of the FS, with the participation of Atlantia and an international partner, Delta, which however does not intend to go beyond 10%. A new commissioner Giuseppe Leogrande also arrives.

The eternal dossier is always stalled as the pandemic starting in March 2020 puts global aviation to the ground. Another coup de grace for the battered Alitalia. But then the Giallorossi government makes a swerve. With the Cura Italia decree, a new company was established under the public wing, Ita. Fabio Lazzerini as CEO and Francesco Caio as president are called to lead the new team. A complex phase of preparation begins with the preparation of the new industrial plan in view of the take-off scheduled for spring 2021. But to leave Ita must have a green light from Brussels. And the EU asks for discontinuity. With these premises, the path of negotiations between the European Commission and the Italian government (in the meantime Mario Draghi has arrived at Palazzo Chigi) is difficult.In April the company does not leave, the take-off is still postponed. In June, the shareholder Mef appoints Alfredo Altavilla as executive chairman in place of Francesco Caio and in July the green light arrives in Brussels. The take-off is finally set for October 15th.