Aviation
Commercial /
Europe
ITA inauguration
Alitalia lands her last plane after 74 years of operations
Alitalia A330
Eric Salard, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Gabriela Ramos
10/15/2021
The airline Alitalia ended its operations after 74 years in the market, with a flight from Cagliari, in Sardinia, to Rome, by an Airbus A320. The pilot who commanded the flight spent his entire career with the company. His name is Andrea Gioia, 55 years old and 15 thousand flight hours.
In a Twitter post, a video shows the moment after landing in Rome, when a flight attendant of the company took an emotional farewell. His speech is followed by a round of applause from passengers (link below).
Now, the operations of the new state-owned airline, Italia Transporto Aéreo (ITA), will begin operations, with its inaugural flight scheduled for this Friday, October 15, departing Milan and bound for Bari.
The traditional Italian airline Alitalia ended up succumbing to market changes, economic crises and mismanagement. Although the brand was purchased and continues to be used by the Italian government, the concept behind the new operation will not be similar to Alitalia's traditional glamour.
Alitalia's story begins on May 5, 1947, when an aircraft of the company flew the Turin-Rome-Catania route. Ten years later, it was already a company with 3,000 employees and 37 aircraft, having risen from 20th place in the international ranking to 12th among the best in the world, under the name Alitalia – Linee Aeree Italiane. It carried over a million passengers for the first time in 1960, when it becomes the official airline of the Olympics in Rome. In 1969, the company's aircraft were painted with the traditional “A Tricolor”.
The company began to face difficulties in the 1990s. In 2008, a consortium of Italian businessmen was created to avoid the sale to Air France-KLM. In 2015, it was Etihad's turn, but not even a billionaire Arab investment was able to avoid the bankruptcy, which began on May 2, 2017 and has lasted until the present day, when the company succumbed once and for all amid the pandemic .
Alitalia A320
Alessandro Ambrosetti, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commmons
Hyperlinks:
https://twitter.com/BoardingPa...
...
...
Gabriela Ramos
Gabriela is the latest addition to the editorial team of our website, having provided us with her solid background in editing, publishing and photography, and her interest and training in aviation history and historiography. His good taste and common sense and great cleverness and sagacity in the selection of themes and materials greatly enriched our vocabulary and narrative style. Gabriela brought unusual predicates and came to stay, helping to point the way of success of our portal.
   
|