How a piece of paper may seal the fate of Alitalia

Antonio Amoroso, an Italian transport union official, emerged from a building at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport this week holding a piece of paper that could seal the collapse of Alitalia, the country’s flag carrier. On it was a handwritten tally of votes from the airline’s nearly 12,000 employees, showing that they had overwhelmingly rejected a deal mediated by the government nearly two weeks ago to cut salaries and jobs in exchange for a new cash injection from private investors to save Alitalia.  “The Arabised Alitalia has failed,” said Amoroso, referring to the 2014 agreement which made Etihad, the UAE-based carrier, a 49% shareholder in the company. “We are asking the government to reopen talks to find a different solution,” he added. Amoroso is betting that overwhelming political pressure will lead Rome to proceed to another taxpayer bailout of the Italian airline, which has been around since 1947.  For decades, successive Italian governments have propped up Alitalia as a matter of national pride and political survival, ploughing an estimated E7b into it since the 1970s despite the fact that it rarely turned an annual profit. At each critical juncture, the sequence has been familiar: mounting concerns about the financial viability of the airline, halfhearted or botched restructuring and privatisation plans, management shake-ups, strikes by angry employees and last-ditch rescue talks.  But this time may be different. The Italian government, led by centre-left prime minister Paolo Gentiloni, has ruled out the nationalisation of Alitalia, and warned that Monday’s vote was its last chance for survival. On Tuesday, Alitalia’s board said that the airline’s recapitalisation was now “impossible”, convening a shareholder meeting for April 27 to pave the way for the airline to go into administration. This means it will either be wound down or sold. <br/>