Italy’s perennially lossmaking national airline has been a thorn in the side of governments for decades. Now, with the carrier renationalised as a result of the Covid-19 crisis and injected with E3b on top of existing state loans, Italy is working on yet another relaunch of an airline that has not posted a year of net profit since the start of the millennium. PM Giuseppe Conte last week described Alitalia as “a project, a newco” and that the government’s plan would be focused on preserving the connectivity of the airline’s international and domestic network. “We must try to protect this space in the market because it is important [for Italy] to have a carrier,” he said, but offered few other details. Founded by the government at the end of the second world war, the carrier thrived for four decades as the public purse paid for an expansion of its fleet, staff and routes until its first crisis emerged in the 1990s. But with the aviation industry tentatively resuming flights, Italy has to decide whether to appoint an insider to lead the overhaul, or try to make a clean break with the past and bring in a new face. An announcement is expected in the coming weeks, according to a person familiar with the matter. Although no formal strategy has been unveiled, Alitalia is expected to be handed a monopoly for air transport between Sicily and mainland Italy, as well as other minor islands. More controversially, some Italian media reports have suggested the government may even seek to impose Alitalia’s employment contract framework on all other carriers operating in Italy — a move that lawyers say would be immediately challenged.<br/>
sky
Alitalia had E232m in its coffers on May 31, Italian industry minister Stefano Patuanelli said on Tuesday, as the government prepares to take over an airline that has burned through cash in the COVID-19 pandemic. The nationalisation of the loss-making business comes after 11 troubled years of private management and three failed restructuring attempts. The government injected E400m into Alitalia at the beginning of this year, after granting a bridge loan of E900m in 2017, which was not paid back. “As of May 31 the company had 232 million euros in liquidity ... revenue between January and May amounted to 505 million,” Patuanelli told a parliamentary hearing. In the same period last year, the carrier recorded E1.1b in revenues. Transport Minister Paola De Micheli, also addressing parliament on the nationalisation plan, said the government would invest in planes, “particularly for long-haul” flights. Rome said last month, as it eased a three-month coronavirus lockdown, that it would inject at least 3 billion euros of fresh capital into Alitalia to relaunch it as a new public company. The government planned to nationalise the carrier in early June, but the project has not taken shape yet and the ministers did not give a time frame on Tuesday.<br/>