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Italy’s newest attempt to rescue failed airline Alitalia has one main objective: rope in Lufthansa. The government last week tasked Alitalia’s new management team with drawing up a business plan that will satisfy Lufthansa’s demand for restructuring at the money-losing airline in exchange for a role in running it, people familiar with the matter said. In a Nov. 19 letter to the government, Lufthansa made a series of requests including shrinking Alitalia’s fleet by about 30%, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing sensitive deliberations. In the letter Lufthansa said it would possibly be open to an equity investment of as much as E160m. It would also be prepared to pay Alitalia as much as E50m for its decline in revenue in moving from the Sky Team group to Star Alliance, the people said. The German carrier’s interest is conditional on Alitalia’s profitability, according to the people. “We have always said that we are interested in a restructured Alitalia,” a spokesman for Lufthansa said. “We could also imagine conventional partnerships with Alitalia.” While the Lufthansa letter didn’t mention redundancies, it did discuss the possible sale of Alitalia’s baggage-handling unit and plans for cost savings at its maintenance division, the people said.<br/>

KLM has announced plans to buy an undisclosed quantity of used cooking oil-based sustainable aviation fuel from Finnish company Neste, which will supply flights from Amsterdam Schiphol on a drop-in basis. “This volume is additional to the existing supply from Los Angeles to bridge the period towards the opening of the SAF production plant which is to be built in Delfzijl, Netherlands in 2022. This plant, which is being developed by support of KLM and other industry partners, will supply 75,000 tonnes of sustainable aviation fuel a year to KLM,” the Dutch carrier said. The Neste SAF will be used for flights out of KLM’s Amsterdam home base. It is a so-called “drop-in” fuel, which means it can be used without any modifications to aircraft engines, or fuel infrastructure at the airport, when blended with fossil fuel. “The sustainable fuel is produced from used cooking oil and will reduce CO2 emissions by up to 80% compared to fossil kerosene. This purchase is the next step in the use of sustainable fuel, as it is the first time the fuel will be supplied using the existing infrastructure at Schiphol,” KLM said. KLM president & CEO Pieter Elbers said the purchase was “largely” made possible by companies taking part in KLM’s Corporate BioFuel Program. Under this scheme, companies pay a surcharge that covers the difference in price between SAFs and regular kerosene.<br/>