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.

Just remember, today is your last chance to vote in the 2008 Weblog Awards. You can vote once per day, so even if you’ve voted before, head on back and do it one more time. Voting ends at:

9a in Sydney (Jan 14)
7a in Tokyo (Jan 14)
10p in London
5p in New York
2p in Los Angeles
12n in Honolulu

My guess is that it’ll be a close race all the way to the end, so make sure you head over and vote for the blog you like best.

http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-travel-blog/

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

---

Hallelujah! It’s official. Alitalia is born again. Praise Silvio! Last night, the last “old” Alitalia flight landed and the airline completely shut down for a few hours in order to get some sort of certification change. This morning, Alitalia woke up merged with Air One under the “new” Alitalia name. That means we need a new “worst airline ever.” Yes, that honor will now be bestowed upon . . . the “new” Alitalia. I’m operating under the premise that they are guilty until proven innocent.

And why would I automatically pass it on to the new Alitalia? Well not much is changing yet. Yes, we have a new, smaller Alitalia that now owns Air One as well. The combined airlines will continue to operate separately for now, but they’re beginning to merge pieces together. But most importantly, we still have those oh-so-stubborn unions which are still rattling their sabres, hoping for a miracle to save all their jobs. There’s probably only room for one miracle here, and that’s the fact that Alitalia still exists. Instead, we’ll see protests all day long and maybe even a strike or two considering how things work over there.

Oh, and there is one other big piece of news. Alitalia has now officially chosen Air France as the winner of the ownership lottery. For a mere 323 million euros, Air France gets 25 percent of the airline. Looks like the French have succeeded in stopping the German march southward, sort of. Lufthansa will still start up its Italia subsidiary to fly out of Milan, and they own Air Dolomiti as well so there will be strong competition.

But Air France now gets three out of nineteen (19?!) board seats and Alitalia will remain in Skyteam. Alitalia frequent fliers probably won’t see a big change on that front at all. So now we have a private Alitalia that’s a little smaller, but those are really the only changes so far. Can it really find its way out of last place in the race for worst airline ever? Time will tell, but of course, I highly doubt it.

I couldn’t let this year finish up without squeezing in one more post on Alitalia. It’s just too much fun. The airline has finished up the year just as it started, by being completely and totally awful in every way.

The sale of the airline is now completed and CAI will be relaunching the carrier in the next few weeks. We still have no idea which partner airline CAI will choose for Alitalia. I’m not sure what the holdup has been this time, but I’m not really going to bother trying to figure it out. They say it’ll be a “few weeks” but at the same time they say they’re close. Right.

But more importantly, the employees are unhappy (surprise, surprise) and they decided to take action at the worst possible time. You always have sympathy when people are at risk of losing their jobs, but I lose all sympathy completely when they decide to throw a wildcat strike only a couple days before Christmas, stranding travelers who just want to be with their families.

Apparently about 100 flights were scrapped on December 22 and another 40 or so on December 23 as the extremely selfish employees decided to walk off the job and take out their frustrations on innocent passengers. Shame on you all.

On the management side, Alitalia continues to try to shrink. The airline strangely decided to take ads out in a bunch of papers including the Financial Times saying that it was soliciting bids for 46 aircraft. That hardly sounds like the right way to handle this. Heck, it doesn’t sound effective at all.

But if you’re interested, they’re trying to pawn off a couple 767s, 22 MD-80s (I hear Allegiant knocking), 14 Embraer regional jets, and 8 ATR 72 turboprops. You could probably talk them into parting with one of those ERJs for a couple sheep and a bottle of wine.

Let’s raise our glasses on New Year’s Eve with the hope that Alitalia will continue to provide me with excellent blog fodder for years to come. Somehow I have no doubts.

Ok kids, who’s ready for an Alitalia update? I know, it’s been a little while. It may seem like plenty has happened, but really, we’re not that much closer to resolving this hilarious situation. One of these days, I’ll get around to making a mini-documentary that’s set to the Benny Hill theme music.

So what’s the latest? Well, CAI, the consortium of Italian businessmen, did agree to buy Alitalia for a little over €400 million plus another €600 million in debt. Sounds expensive, but it’s not when you consider that they just get to cherry pick the good parts of the airline that they want to keep. For example, they will only take 93 of Alitalia’s 173 aircraft and only about 60% of the airline’s employees will still have jobs. You know what that means. . . more strikes!

But alas, not all of the prized assets are part of the deal. It appears that Alitalia will be auctioning off its fine art collection. Yes, it had a fine art collection. Is anyone still wondering what’s wrong with this airline?

Anyway, the sale was supposed to be final earlier this week, but wouldn’t you know it’s delayed? Final approval was received yesterday from the EU, and the Italian government has now decided to require that 10% of all seats be sold at the lowest prices available this year. I can’t make this up.

They now say the deal will be signed on December 12, but CAI still needs to get its hands on Air One so it can merge them and relaunch the new Alitalia in January. Why the delay? Sounds like they might be having trouble getting all the cash together in a timely manner. I know I’d think twice before dumping that money into the pot.

We also still don’t know whether Alitalia will partner up with Lufthansa or Air France. Air France has been relatively quiet, but Lufthansa is using a rather unconventional approach to winning this bid. Lufthansa has decided to launch Lufthansa Italia with a half dozen A319s flying out of Milan. I suppose the strategy here is that if Alitalia doesn’t pick Lufthansa, then Lufthansa will just build its own airline to compete (and crush) Alitalia. We’ll see if that works out for them.

This really should have been resolved long ago, but I’m sure enjoying that it continues to drag on.