Alitalia may have some intercontinental flying lessons for SAA
● Italian airline Alitalia, whose inaugural flight from Rome touched down at OR Tambo International Airport this week, may have lessons for this country’s minister of public enterprises when he turns his gaze on SAA.
This includes upping rather than cutting long-haul routes and finding an equity partner with deep pockets and nerves of steel.
After a 17-year absence, Monday marked the arrival of the first of four flights a week between Rome and Johannesburg. “Here is where we want to be,” said Alitalia chief commercial officer Fabio Lazzerini.
The airline predicts numbers on the Rome-Johannesburg route at about 4 000 passengers a week. “If it’s successful, we will re-evaluate the frequency,” said Lazzerini.
The airline’s route expansion — which comes after another tough trading year — took some observers by surprise.
“We’ve encountered a bit of turbulence,” said Lazzerini. “But the airline is in quite good shape, much better than last year when we went through quite a big crisis.”
That crisis was the rejection by the airline’s workers — who have solid union muscle behind them — of a rescue plan presented by various banks and United Arab Emirates carrier Etihad, which took a 49% stake in Alitalia in 2014.
Last year, the Italian government extended a €900-million (about R13.3-billion) loan to the airline to keep it aloft.
Paradoxically, said Lazzerini, Alitalia was in better shape than it had been for the past 10 years. For the first time in seven years, revenues and passenger numbers were up.
“This is allowing the company not to burn cash anymore,” Lazzerini said. “So the [money] the government gave in May last year is still there.”
Nevertheless, Alitalia continues its search for a suitor. At least three tipped their hats in- to the ring this week, including Lufthansa and budget carrier EasyJet.
EasyJet, Europe’s second-biggest lowcost airline, said its expression of interest was made as part of a consortium — the other members of which remain unnamed — Bloomberg News reported.
Air France-KLM Group, which bought a 25% stake in Alitalia in 2009, denied it was interested in bidding.
The group’s stake has been diluted over the years, dropping to around 1% following Etihad’s investment, according to aviation website FlightGlobal.
Etihad’s à1.7-billion investment could not save Alitalia from turbulence caused by a string of terror attacks in Europe in 2016 along with increasing competition from lowcost carriers.
Lazzerini said Alitalia had made a mistake cutting its intercontinental routes, including the Rome-Johannesburg route in 2001 when the airline slashed its long-haul capacity by nearly 18% in favour of preserving domestic routes. “It should have been done the other way around. These are the routes that make an airline successful, especially if you are a legacy airline. A legacy airline comes with a history that needs longhaul connections to allow the big revenue volumes and the ‘high-heel’ revenues coming into the company.”
These are the routes that make an airline successful Fabio Lazzerini Alitalia chief commercial officer