Not watching Big Brother

Yesterday’s Alitalia flight AZ784 Rome/Tokyo was missing an air hostess and they took off without her (history does not, alas! record when they took off but we can assume it was as normal, within 2 or 3 hours of the scheduled time). The lady, Daniela Martani, had been in the Big Brother House since 12th January.

Alitalia says that missing her flight could result in her job being at risk.

Amazing.

Alitalia: same old story

Tuesday 13th January, and we know what that means, don't we? YES... it's the day that Alitalia finally gets going. You will remember that after a couple of false starts last year the CAI consortium finally took over Alitalia on Monday 12th, but had to spend its first day on the ground while the pointy heads checked the planes. So, today it's all GO!!!

Er... no, in fact. All the takeoffs from Linate and Malpensa (Milan and some distance away from Milan) have been suspended because the staff don't like the choice of Air France as partner.

Air France, which was a pretty dreadful airline even before this, is going to regret its dalliance with the Italian unions.

Italy: Alitalia: When will they learn?

An important figure was missing from last week's Rome Energy Meeting, a high-level conference on the future of world energy supplies.

The Conference was due to be opened by Russia's energy minister Anatoly B. Yanovsky but unfortunately he was booked on Alitalia, who cancelled the flight.

Italy: Alitalia delays!

The pilots and stewards of Alitalia, who have not signed the new contracts demanded by the rescue body CAI, have decided to work to rule. This involves implementing in full the pre-take off procedure (what do they usually do?) and they advise that many planes will be taking off late!

Who'd have thought it?

Italy: Alitalia just airborne

The headline in yesterday's Corriere della Sera read 'The new Alitalia takes off without the pilots and the flight assistants'.

These two groups, which are still making wildly unreasonable demands, have not signed the deal.

The decision of the consortium to go ahead is being depicted as brave, but who in their right mind would fly Alitalia now?

Italy: Alitalia, the end?

It is quite incredible that after all this time with Alitalia on the brink (it seems to me it was bust in July, if not earlier), we are now told that today is the last day. If everything isn't agreed by tonight, Alitalia will cease to be.

I am reminded of some ham actor going through a death scene and milking it for 5 minutes on stage.

Wouldn't it be easier just to let the thing drop and have people who knew how to run airlines do the flying in and out of Italy?

I bet some agreement is reached, though, rendering the company's long term viability even less likely.

Holding my breath

As I write, Alitalia has hours to submit its business plan to the Italian Civil Aviation Authority, and several unions have yet to agree.

In America the markets are on hold pending Congressional approval of the rescue plan. We need something, even if, as Anatole Kaletsky says in today's Times, it has not been fully thought through. I am told that something about moral hazard and something about holding back bonuses should see it scrape under the wire....

And in the UK, we wait to see if Gordon Brown has been saved by his wife.

Interesting times.

Alitalia

Incredibly, the saga of Alitalia continues. The airline loses 3m euros a day, and a month ago it had only 50m euros in cash, so it ought at least to be insolvent. There have been some cancelled flights and there are stories of credit for fuel being stopped but like some ham actor in a B-movie the corpse keeps on thrashing around.

It is a problem for Silvio Berlusconi. During the election campaign he promised that there would be an all-Italian solution for the bail out. The unions then rejected the Air France -KLM deal which was on the table. Now they have rejected the all-Italian one, which required 3,000 job losses, longer hours and some pay reductions.

On a political level Berlusconi must decide whether to ditch Alitalia and blame the unions (no one knows whether they would have rejected the previous deal but it looks, at least, as if they rejected it on the promise of something better) or whether he should press on, forcing everyone's hand.

I would counsel ditching Alitalia, for three reasons: firstly we are past the point of negotiation; forcing the issue now would require a real demonstration of harsh reality and there is neither the time nor the will for this.

Second, it does not seem likely that it can now thrive. I know of many people who stopped flying Alitalia months ago because its reliability record was so poor you couldn't be even moderately sure of catching a business meeting. I don't think they will go back to it.

Most importantly, there is the future to consider. One commentator has said that Alitalia is lost but there is still time to save Italy. The unions are so strong here that there has to come a Margaret Thatcher and the miners moment or the country will descend into chaos.

Berlusconi could send the clearest signal to other unions that he tried his best but the pilots were so intransigent that they forced the liquidation; that even Italians cannot pretend they can always avoid the nasty realities of life. It would be a good lesson for the country to learn.

But 19,000 people would lose their jobs.

Alitalia

News that AirFrance has pulled out of their Alitalia bid must surely start people wondering whether Italy needs an airline at all. It has always had union troubles (it used to be that all the staff had to live in Rome, and were flown up to Milan and back every day!) and indeed failure to obtain union assurances was one of AF-KLM’s reasons. But there are others.

Alitalia loses money, its planes are out of date, the baggage handling is awful and it is impossible to use it for business because its timekeeping is so erratic.

It is being kept going as a matter of pride, but it is a pride that Italy can no longer afford.