Ah l'Italia... A L'Italien or else

Alitalia is the company that better identifies Italy; its positive and its negative aspects. A beautiful name, a fashionable logo, it shows the Italian inventive even when it comes to its flight codes (AZ) but on the other end reflects the Italian attitude in waste and favouritisms and more than any other company in Italy proves that most of our politicians are there thanks to votes in exchange of positions.

Let's go through step by step.

Alitalia staff members are among the best paid in this sector, if not the best paid.
Alitalia it's a burden to the Italian collectivity as the Governments have been pumping money into it for decades now.
Alitalia is a toy in the hands of the governments and a tool to show the virility of this or that political party.
Alitalia is the only airline in Europe in such a disastrous state that has two international hubs in the same country. While other airlines using alliances have reduced their hubs or even utilized hubs outside their country of origin, Alitalia has got one in Milan and one in Rome.

The hub in Milan Malpensa has gone through some many problems due to the location, in the middle of nowhere with fog and difficult to reach from any location. Add to this the scandals about the workers looting luggages. Plus let's not forget the acoustic pollution that has been pestering local people.

Malpensa was a political price to pay to the Northern League but nobody thought that Alitalia had mainly Roman based stuff and this would have cost a fortune to Alitalia as they would have never moved to Milan (far from Malpensa anyway) particularly with the fact that Italian workers are untouchable.

So, every day there are flights packed with pilots, stewards and other sort of staff flying from Rome to Milan and back in the evening. These are all additional costs.
Alitalia loses a few billions per day and now, it's time to sell it and end this tragedy for Italian taxpayers.
The proposals are two. One is a proposal from Air One, a minor Italian career, that is supported by the money of a Bank and the other one would be the international alliance with Air France-KLM.

Of course Italians prefer Air One because this way the company will remain Italian but, what they don't like is the fact that the value of the company has been estimated to…. 0.01 cent per share, when in the market
is quoted between 70 and 82 cents (depending on the market mood)…

So, selling it to Air One will mean that there will be a few angry shareholders in the market and will bring back some recent memories (Cirio, Argentina, Parmalat) and some inevitable class actions and lawsuits.

Air France proposal seems to be fairer but the loss of the national identity seem to hurt too many.

Frankly I would gift the company to the employees and the trade unions and tell them to do with it whatever they want. At the end of the story if Alitalia has reached this point it's only due to the protection all employees have been benefiting in these decades.