Ah, spring. The days become longer, the temps get warmer, and, apparently, it’s a great time for airline strikes. Lufthansa pilots just struck for a day and postponed the rest for later. Meanwhile, British Airways is on deck as the French air traffic controllers wreak havoc in their own country. And don’t worry, Alitalia has struck in the last week as well, of course. What the heck is going on here?

With Lufthansa, the pilots aren’t happy so they walked out yesterday. That left the airline canceling about half their daily flights and plenty of passengers stuck going nowhere. Last night, the pilots agreed to suspend their strike until March 8 so they could rejoin talks. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Lufthansa will magically start operating at full speed today. It takes a little while to get everything back into place for a normal operation, so check with the airline if you’re flying.

As for British Airways, well, we’ve talked about this one before. Remember that the BA flight attendants were going to strike over Christmas but then the courts told them to screw off because of some voting irregularities. Well, they’re back and now with a new vote showing 83 percent support, the strike could come with only a week’s notice. At least they’re promising it won’t disrupt Easter flying. Not sure why Christmas was ok but Easter isn’t, but I’m not complaining.

The French air traffic controllers? They’ve been on strike this week and have hurt a lot of the air traffic running through the country. For example, Air France has announced that today it will operate all its long haul flights but only 75 percent of European flights will operate from Paris/de Gaulle with only 50 percent from Orly.

Why do we keep seeing all these strikes? Well it’s more of the same. It’s usually an issue of job retention, outsourcing, and of course, pay. The problem is that the industry today is not what it was 30 years ago when pay was high and so were fares. Some airlines have been able to adapt but none have done so without serious pain for most involved (except of course, those insanely-misguided CEOs who think that taking a big bonus in the face of all this pain is a good idea).

What we’re seeing now, however, is two different types of unions based on how they react. The labor unions that realize that this is unfortunately a necessary change will be in better shape because they can participate in the discussion and work to find ways to help reduce costs with the least amount of pain to their members. Those unions that simply want to strike if they don’t get everything they want, no matter how delusional, will end up watching from the outside as the industry changes without their participation.

As a result, customers end up suffering, of course. If your flight is canceled because of a strike, then I would just cancel and rebook at a later date if you can. If you need to be there, well, you can look at other airlines but they will be bursting at the seams trying to accommodate everyone. Just remember that a strike doesn’t mean the airline shuts down. Most airlines are able to get together enough of a skeleton crew to operate at least some flights, as Lufthansa showed by operating half theirs. But running only half your flights is still a recipe for lots of stuck travelers.

Oh, and Alitalia? Well it’s hardly worth mentioning, but they struck on February 16. Ho, hum. Nothing to see here.

[Original Photo via Steinsky on Wikipedia]

I have never written a more surprising post than this one. Alitalia, the queen of red ink, has actually, shockingly, found that by making more money than it was spending, it could post a profit. This past quarter, the airline made 15 million euros in operating profit (pdf). Holy crap.

Don’t get too excited, Alitalia lovers. (There have to be one or two of you, right?) This does not mean that Alitalia has relinquished its title as the worst airline ever. But, in a nod to their tremendous achievement, I have introduced a question mark to their badge. It’s no longer the firm statement that it used to be, but something tells me it will return to that point once again soon.

There are still plenty of problems. These results were for the third quarter – July, August, and September. That’s prime tourist season for Italy yet the airline only managed a 74% load factor. Granted, that’s a huge improvement over earlier quarters, but my guess is that it will drop once again now that the tourists are gone.

Even more shocking is the airline’s operational performance. They ran a 99.7% completion factor and on time percentage rose to 74%. They even passed 80% in October, the first month of Q4. Remember, this is an airline that usually likes to strike every couple of days.

Wow, just wow. I’m curled up in the fetal position right now questioning everything. If this keeps up, CEO Rocco Sabelli will get the leader of the century award. Fortunately, I don’t have much faith that it will continue.

It’s been way too long since my last Alitalia post, hasn’t it? It’s actually been pretty quiet over there as the new management team tries to figure out how to make something of nothing. There’s no question they still have a long way to go after posting their latest results.

For the first half of 2009, the new management team turned in a stellar $385 million loss. That’s right. By “stellar,” I mean “absolutely terrible.” That was 6 percent worse than predicted. But the good news is that $300 million of that loss came in the first quarter. That means they lost less than $100 million in Q2. Should we be congratulating them for that? Sheesh.

Load factors have been dreadful. In the first quarter, it was 51 percent but in the second quarter it rose to 65 percent. It’s amazing how good a number like 65 percent looks when it follows 51 percent. It’s still terrible.

The airline is expecting a 72 percent load factor this month, but that is still below where it should be. We’re talking about Italy in July – every tourist on earth is heading there as we speak and yet they can’t even fill three quarters of their seats? Yikes.

Oh Alitalia, how I’ve missed you.

Time flies, doesn’t it? It seems like just yesterday that Alitalia was finally being privatized, but it’s actually been a few months. I thought it was time to check in on the airline to see how it’s doing. Anyone want to make any bets?

Of course, the airline isn’t doing well at all. It is projected to lose 200 million euros for 2009. That may sound like a big number for an airline that shrunk dramatically after its restructuring, but . . . uh, yeah that is a pretty big number. Granted, it’s far less than what the airline was going to lose in 2008, but really that’s a given. If they couldn’t improve on what the bungling government was doing, then there would have been no hope at all.

So are people flocking back to Alitalia now that it’s under new management? Hardly. The airline was crowing that it had bumped its load factor up to 59%. It had apparently been down around 43% so this is good news. I believe Alitalia will soon be launching its new ad campaign, “Fly Us and Get an Empty Middle Seat.” Catchy, no?

And the news doesn’t get much better. Remember that Lufthansa started up its own Lufthansa Italia subsidiary to fly between Italy and other EU markets? Well they’re heading for the Italian domestic market now as well. In April, Lufthansa will start flying from Milan to Bari, Naples, and most importantly, Rome, the crown jewel domestic market.

But at least labor relations are going well. The unions haven’t struck since, well, yesterday. Ok, maybe that’s not so good either. They had planned a 24 hour strike yesterday to protest their treatment by the new management team. I didn’t hear anything about whether or not that disrupted any flights or not, but maybe that’s just not considered news anymore.

Thanks for continuing to provide me with excellent blog fodder, Alitalia.

Yes, this is a post about Italy, but believe it or not, Alitalia isn’t the main focus. It’s the bungling Italian government that has caught my eye once again for their plans to help Alitalia and kick low cost carriers to the far corners of the Rome metro area. If your flag carrier can’t win through competition, might as well play dirty and help them out, right? Sheesh.

I don’t speak Italian, so my understanding of the situation relies on Google Translate and a Ryanair press release. Here’s what seems to be happening.

Noise has been a sensitive issue for those living around Ciampino airport, a mere 10 miles from central Rome. The airport had been growing with Ryanair and EasyJet having substantial operations along with smaller operations from Wizz and, apparently, an airline called Romavia (which still flies a 707?!). Alitalia and pretty much everyone else fly from Leonardo da Vinci Airport at Fiumicino, about 25 miles from the city center.

The region’s government decided to turn Viterbo, an old military base about 60 miles north of the city into the third airport for the area. Just to get an idea for how far out this place is, take a look at this map:

If they want a third airport, that’s there own business, but now all the noise complaints caused them to run a study. According to Ryanair, the results prove that there isn’t a huge noise issue, but the region’s government is still looking to shrink or shut the airport anyway. It wouldn’t surprise me.

Raise your hand if you know who would get the biggest benefit by having Ryanair and EasyJet move to the far away Viterbo airport. That’s right, it’s our good friends at Alitalia.

If anyone knows more about this story AND speaks English, hit the comments. By the way, if you just want to complain about the noise around the airport, don’t bother. That airport is one of the oldest in the world – it’s been there since 1916 – so you knew what was there when you moved in.