Oh Alitalia, why can’t you have any really exciting news? Instead, we just get to watch Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi 
try to pull his foot out of his mouth and find a way to do exactly what he said he wouldn’t; get an foreign carrier to fix Alitalia. Good luck with that.
Remember how Silvio wanted to keep Alitalia Italian? And how that killed the airline’s best prospect for survival, a takeover by Air France/KLM? Yeah, well I had to laugh when I saw the International Herald Tribune headline, “Italy gov’t in Alitalia talks with foreign company.”
I think it’s time to get a little cranky here. What the hell is wrong with the Italian government? They had a perfectly good solution that is now gone, and they’ve let millions of euros just drain away as they sit with their thumbs up their asses. It’s time for some action instead of just bombastic talks. Oh sure, Berlusconi’s words make it sound like things are moving along.
We already have an industrial plan, the partners and the necessary capital, and we are negotiating with a big foreign company for an alliance at the international level.
Sounds good, right? But I think the IHT says it best.
However, the government has failed to present its plan by an end-of-July deadline, and no significant development is expected to be announced during the summer.
I’m sure the government is all too busy going on holiday during the month of August to bother with something like this. Just imagine how much money disappears into this black hole daily? Will someone just get this over with? Pull the bandage off quickly instead of slowly peeling it off.
