This week’s featured link:
Air Italy flights to Chicago risk rekindling row with U.S. carriers – Reuters
Air Italy has been announcing a ton of new service to the US recently with flights from Milan to LA, San Francisco, and Chicago. Do I think that this is being funded by Qatar’s money? Yes. Do I think this is a bad idea? Yes. Do I think that it should be blocked because of that? Not yet. Any airline can raise money and make bad decisions. Just look at Alitalia with Etihad. Eventually, it fails (and gets saved by the Italian government, in that case). If Qatar has to keep propping the thing up for extended periods of time, then we might have an issue. But for now, it just looks like a soon-to-be-wasted investment by Qatar to me.
Two for the road:
David Neeleman Taps Ex-Allegiant Air Exec for Top Strategy Role at His New Airline – Skift
Remember when Lukas Johnson went to Jetlines in Canada for about a minute or two? Now we know why that ended so quickly. He’s going to head up strategy for Moxy when it gets started.
OneJet lists no assets, $43M in liabilities — and an incomplete tally of creditors – Pittsburgh Business Times (soft paywall)
Someone asked me about OneJet recently. It is dead. The liquidation proceedings seem to be a complete mess.
2 comments on “3 Links I Love: Air Italy Throws Money Away, Moxy Hires, OneJet Is DoneJet”
I’m kind of surprised you’ve seemed to turn skeptical with Moxy, you seemed to have been a little optimistic about it when it was first announced, and places like Airliners.net’s forums and others seem to have nothing but praise for the venture, and any skeptical sentiment on said sites gain replies of “don’t count Neeleman out” or get criticized themselvves.
I doubt very much Air Italy will be stopped. Bottom line, it is a European airline with a majority EU shareholding (something both Air Italy itself and Qatar Airways don’t loose any opportunity to stress; just like 49% Delta owned Virgin Atlantic incidentally). As per the US-EU Open Skies agreement, it is entitled to fly wherever it likes in the US. Trying to stop it would not pick a fight with Qatar but with the EU. Even in these days of “America First” I doubt there is any appetite for that.