Ukraine crisis poses new risks for Alitalia successor ITA - chairman

The Ukraine crisis has hit air traffic just as the sector was emerging from the pandemic and passenger bookings were recovering, the chairman of Alitalia successor ITA Airways said on Tuesday. ITA Chairman Alfredo Altavilla, speaking at a presentation at Rome’s Fiumicino airport, said the invasion of Ukraine “is a risk and uncertainty factor that we didn’t want.” But ITA, which started flying in October, will not modify the business plan it approved in January, CE Fabio Lazzerini said. Altavilla said the new Italian carrier had recorded a “nice increase” in bookings from March and April before the Ukraine crisis emerged last week. Lazzerini said that the closure of Russian airspace to European carriers made routes to Asia longer and more expensive, but also said ITA would only start to fly to Asia in June, when he hoped the Ukraine crisis would be over. For the new summer season, ITA will fly to 64 destinations, of which seven are overseas. The carrier is also launching new long-haul flights for Rome-Miami and Rome-Boston in March and will start a new Milan-New York route in April, it said. The Italian government, which is owns ITA Airways, last month announced the intention to partly privatise the airline. <br/>