November is targeted to see a new dawn for Italy’s airline sector and its long-struggling national carrier Alitalia. There have been many new dawns before. Yet Alitalia has still found itself again drinking in the last-chance saloon.

This time rescue efforts contain more drastic action, which in turn is likely to have a knock-on effect across the Italian airline sector. It not only removes the Italian state from Alitalia ownership, but will essentially merge it with Italy’s second largest operator Air One and shrink their combined operation.

The latest rescue was hatched by Silvio Berlusconi’s government after taking power earlier this year. It came after his high-profile criticism of an earlier deal under which Air France-KLM was to buy the carrier, which ultimately broke down.

Kept afloat by a �300 million ($376 million) bridging loan - a commercial deal according to Italy, but subject of a European Commission state aid probe - Alitalia ultimately entered

This entry was posted on Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.