Goodbye Alitalia: Italy’s new carrier to join airline alliance
Alitalia’s successor ITA Airways will join the Skyteam alliance from next year, reported Reuters.
ITA Airways’ chairman said yesterday that the new-born company aims to renegotiate the place within the Skyteam alliance that once belonged to Alitalia, partnering up with other airlines such as Lufthansa.
“ITA has been created to be a strategic element in one of the large networks that already exist in the sector,” Reuters reported ITA’s chairman Alfredo Altavilla as saying yesterday during a digital event to mark the company’s debut. “ITA can’t be a stand-alone carrier forever.”
ITA replaced Alitalia as Italy’s carrier, starting operations from yesterday as Alitalia ceased to exist.
The new company, which has bought the Alitalia brand, will initially fly on 59 routes, going up to 74 and 89 in 2022 and 2025 respectively.
ITA will start from 52 planes, progressively growing in the next four years to 105 aircraft, which will represent around 70 per cent of the company’s overall fleet.
Putting an end to Alitalia’s troubled history of profitability issues and several privatisation attempts, the transition from Alitalia into ITA was widely opposed by Alitalia’s workforce, as only 2,016 of Alitalia’s employees were hired to work in the new company.
ITA has announced that workers’ numbers will increase from the current 2,800 to 5,570 by 2025.