3 Links I Love: Alitalia Lives, Northern Pacific Looks Good, Less Nicer on Breeze, More on 5G

Alitalia, Breeze, Links I Love, Northern Pacific

Ita Airways: il marchio Alitalia tornerà a volare. Nel 2021 Ebit a -170 milioni di euroCorriere Della Sera
You’re going to want to flip on Google Translate for this, but the surprise of the century is here… oh wait, it’s no surprise at all. It looks like ITA now wants to bring the Alitalia brand back into use. Why wait this long? Well, presumably it’s so the airline could waste money on existing ITA branding efforts first. After all it lost a cool 170m euros in its first 2.5 months of operation alone. That’s not embarrassing enough. But fear not, ITA won’t be going away either. Apparently the company likens this to having multiple brands like KLM and Transavia. But neither will be low-cost, so… yeah. We’ll find out more on January 31.

Image of the Week

Northern Pacific has a nice-looking livery, but then again, it’s impossible to make a 757 look bad. I was at the livery rollout and will have more on this airline next week.

Two for the Road

Debuts Airbus A220 Aircraft on 17 Existing Routes Ahead of Upcoming New Routes AnnouncementBreeze PR
Breeze will roll its A220s out on existing routes this summer — look for new flying coming for Embraer 190/195s — but there’s one thing that caught my eye. Instead of saying that there will be 36 of the Nicest biz class-style seating, it now says between 12 and 36. I feel a WHOLE lot better about 12 than I do about 36.

What the Eff, FAA? My Insanely Long Field Guide to the FAA/FCC 5G C-Band Fight.Wetmachine
Someone dropped this in the comments of yesterday’s post, and I thought it was worth reposting to give another perspective on this whole 5G mess. It is a very long but interesting read that trashes the FAA.

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8 comments on “3 Links I Love: Alitalia Lives, Northern Pacific Looks Good, Less Nicer on Breeze, More on 5G

  1. I’ve heard that some sort of compromise has been struck between the aggrieved parties in the 5G matter. Mr. Parker seems satisfied with the pending outcome. Good news for all involved.

  2. Carnac the Magnificent, I mean Cranky,

    Why would Verizon and AT&T bid on the C-spectrum if they knew there could be issues? And, who makes up ITA’s Board of Directors that would allow ITA to use the Alitalia brand?

    1. Angry Bob – They needed the spectrum, and this was the best option for them by far to get it. Besides, the FCC still doesn’t think there’s an issue so why would AT&T and Verizon be concerned?

      On ITA, I don’t know who is on the board.

  3. So ITA is going to use the Alitalia brand…but not for their international operation, or for a new LCC/ULCC subsidiary.

    They’re always exploring new ways to be on the cutting edge of money-losing strategies.

    I’m only surprised they haven’t decided to put the Alitalia brand on a new space tourism subsidiary…

  4. Not sure if anyone else feels this way, but if JetBlue is in the financial position to do this, I feel a merger between B6 and MX to come in the next 3 years. That is, if Breeze can get itself to breakeven financial position. It will be Alaska/Virgin America all over again. Pure speculation on my part, but “feels like it will happen”.

  5. Breeze did say from the beginning that their 220s would be quick-ish-change, so this spread makes a lot of sense. Either way this will be a premium-heavy A/C though, since the domestic F style seats get replaced with extra legroom wide Economy. And it sounds like the premium-light config still has as many F seats as DL’s, and more E+ in that config.

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