A long list of requests, what was the reaction?
Italy, like other countries in Southern Europe, wants to restart tourism after the pandemic and there are positive signs: in April we transported only one million passengers, but in May they rose to 2 million to continue 5 million in June, in July we expect 8.5 million and in August 10 million. Let’s be clear, these are not the 40 million passengers we carried before the Covid crisis: with these numbers, in the summer we expect to reach 77% of the pre-pandemic volume to reach 90% in November and December, when the restrictions will be further reduced. All this is possible thanks to vaccines. It takes time but we are close to normal: I think that the precovid levels of traffic will be reached in the summer of 2022, at least for the short hall in Europe, for the long haul, however, it will take longer. Clearly, the fares continue to be very low to allow everyone to travel.
The state aid lawsuits against Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines were rejected by the European Court. Will you appeal?
Yes, right. Causes are won and lost. Those against Sas and KLM, for example, we have won. It is clear that many companies would have gone bankrupt without public aid, state “cocaine” to make companies like Alitalia and Air France survive. Our message to the European Commission is that if it accepts public aid it must allow for more competition …
In a few days you will publish the quarterly results. What are your expectations? You have already announced that you will hire 200 pilots for the new planes.